Passed On
by KQSimply
Summary: After losing her battle with a terminal illness at the age of 13, Riley Andersen wakes up a year later and learns her spirit now resides inside the mind of her newborn sister. She determines to be the essence that shines behind her sibling's eyes, to prove to the world that she never really left...a feat she simply cannot do without a little help from some new, unexpected friends.
1. Dusk and Dawn

_Hi there. To those who are following Subconscious, yes, it's still very much in the works c: Two stories at the same time is normally a huge no-no for me; however, I had the words in my head and *had* to get them out there before they left me._

 _This storyline is inspired by a thwarted theory I had after reading the fanfic Outside In by San Ookamitora. If you haven't read that one yet, definitely give it a boo. It's sweet and glorious!_

 _If you are reading this, I hope you enjoy it. My goal is to update it twice a week, though if by some chance there is any demand, I will certainly do my very best to update faster._

 _Thank you for stopping by! Happy reading, to those who choose to read. c:_

 _~KQSimply_

* * *

A tranquil hush crept in alongside Riley's laboring chest, quietly locating her every ache and physical strife. With hands as soft as the morning mist that floated just outside of her window, it soothingly plucked the remnants of her suffering away, little by little.

Before long, Riley could not so much as thinly recall what the pain of her illness ever felt like.

It was beautiful. She felt feathery, calmed, and unfettered.

Free.

 _Take a deep breath_ , the gentleness of the morning air whispered, _and let yourself rest. You fought so hard. You were so brave. Now, you can finally rest._

Her chest rose, and gradually fell.

 _There there, child...Rest._

She blinked as the morning, lovely and cool, kissed her, gently whisking her senses and all that she knew away with its tender lips as it withdrew.

* * *

A new phase of life finally woke in the ethereal darkness of a very special place.

The invisible hands of this phase waved themselves, drawing Riley's mist-like particles back together. For a brief instance she resembled a cloud, hovering before many sources of vibrant lights.

Awareness extended itself from within her as her form continued to take shape.

 _I'm…me._

 _I'm here._

 _…Er, I'm_ somewhere _._

 _…But where, exactly?..._

 _Well...I suppose there's just one way to find out._

Riley opened her eyes.

There was an impressive amount of nothingness stretched out before her. It felt disconcerting, all of this…nothing. It never occurred to her that so much of it could be gathered in one place, and that she could end up founded and conscious in the middle of it.

She turned her eyes down to her arms, finding them clothed in the bright, striped sleeves of one of her favourite pull-over sweaters. The length of her slender arms lead her down to the matter of her hands. Riley's flesh sparkled and floated before her, as though it was made up of tiny, stippled fragments of her original self.

Silently, she passed her hands over themselves, and a sense of vivacity and exuberance tickled her in return. She could feel again…but not the way she remembered.

She felt less like a person…more like an essence.

A spirit.

 _…Am I dreaming?_

She began to walk forward, studying her converse sneakers as they crossed the solid void they stood upon.

 _This_ might _be a dream._

 _I_ could _be asleep._

But this was nothing like a dream. Somehow, though she felt distant and entirely too far from the brilliant comforts of the world she could still remember, Riley felt more alive than ever, and felt no subliminal desire to wake up again. How strange and confusing it was, to feel so alive in a universe where there was nothing else around her. She passed her eyes along the invisible walls of the emptiness, trying with all of her might to understand what was happening.

A heavy, looming sense of loneliness persisted for a while in the meantime. She couldn't be sure how long this lasted, for she had lost her sense of time somewhere between _now_ and _then_ , whenever _then_ had been, if it had ever _been_ at all…

And then, defeating the great tremendous nothing of this place, a new, brilliant light began to blossom in her peripheral vision.

Riley hastily turned to its source, her eyes rocking back and forth. Dizzy spells surged through her body as she watched a blurry shape take form. From mists...to cloud...to figure...to an odd class of… _life_.

A girl, unlike any other girl Riley had seen before, released herself from the shadow beyond her light as she opened her large, curious eyes. Her body was made of the cheerful rays of the happiest summer afternoon, or perhaps it was made of the brightest wishing star…her hair, short and free-spirited, was blue, like a clear night sky, and her celestial eyes matched even its glittery composition.

Immediately, these magical eyes found Riley's and their owner gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth, her body suddenly pin-straight and rigid. The two sole inhabitants of this No-World stood across the short distance from one another, and at first, neither girl could move.

Finally, the one with confetti-riddled eyes managed to utter a word into the stifling silence their collective shock had created.

"… _Riley?_ "

Riley startled. Her body shuddered, begging her to take a step back, but…she couldn't. In fact, she wasn't sure she really wanted to.

"…is that _you_? Riley, is it...is it _really_ you?"

Riley's eyes frolicked to and fro. "...I _think_ so." The words surprised both of them as they slipped off her tongue.

The girl across from her slowly made her inquisitive approach. There was still a nagging sense to back away, but Riley was transfixed by her now, and couldn't bring herself to move. Her eyes were lovely and pleasant and hardly seemed the type to do her any harm. Curiosity got the best of Riley, and she was still.

A giddy, breathless smile crept onto the girl's face. "…Riley… _wow_ …I mean, **_wow_**. This is…this is unreal. I never thought I'd..." she laughed, giddy with disbelief. "It's you. It really _is_ you." She was directly in front of Riley now, almost toe-to-toe with her. Riley looked down, noting in a bizarrely casual way that the other was barefoot. "…But how? How is this possible? How can this _be?"_

Riley shook her head slowly. Sense was beginning to fill it, now that the two were so close. "I don't understand. What's going on? Who are you?"

The smile on the other's face only grew and grew. Her blue eyes darted about enthusiastically as she tried to put too many words together all at once. "Oh, Riley…it—it's—where do I start? How do I explain? It's complicated – but not really – I always thought I'd know exactly how to tell you if we ever met, but now that I'm actually standing in front of you—it's just so crazy—I, I—"

Spotting the utter bewilderment in Riley's eyes, she stopped herself, and drew a calm, steadying breath.

"I'm Joy."

"…Joy?"

"Yes. Yes!"

Joy took one of Riley's hands into both of hers and nodded feverishly, grinning with all of her might, as though this had answered the million and one questions sizzling in Riley's head in one fell swoop. Now, this couldn't have been farther from the truth, but suddenly, Riley was too distracted to care. The moment they touched, Riley felt tremendously good. A smile took over her that she refused to resist.

Touching Joy felt just like scoring the winning goal in a hockey game. It was like the face of a delighted puppy pleading for belly rubs. It was the consequential, core-residing sparkle of a hearty laugh.

A silly, abstract thought crossed Riley's mind just then. The idea was desperate to get out there and suggest itself, despite how outlandish it seemed.

Could Joy have actually been...?

Riley opened her mouth, and then closed it, and her question traveled no farther than this. A blinding white light suddenly deluged the void, immediately seizing Joy and Riley's attention. They spun around, finding themselves staring up into a large, oval window that shuddered open, allowing the piercing light through.

Joy seemed startled, yet unphased, as though a part of her had been expecting this. She released Riley's hand and began to step closer to the source, shaking her head in disbelief. "…I'm so confused…this really _is_ impossible. One minute, we thought…w-we thought you were about to…I mean, you were so sick…we were scared, and things were starting to fade…and now, you're in _here_. But how can you be _inside_ , if you're also _outside?"_

"You're not making sense. Nothing is making sense. 'In here'? Where is 'here'? Do you know where we are?"

Joy looked up to the window again and struggled in vain to provide Riley with an answer she might like. Riley realized with a bittersweet sigh that Joy was as clueless as she was.

There was a sound, next, to accompany the light. It was garbled and fuzzy, as though they had their heads were logged underwater, but even in spite of this, the instant Riley heard it, her heart filled with hope and a sudden desperation. Her vision swam ruthlessly against the intense light above her, aware, somehow, that this was where the sound of a familiar voice was coming from. Like watching a mirror defogging, a blurry face began to appear from beyond the abyss of white, only instead of finding her own reflection once the fog cleared, Riley found her mother.

She was awe-struck and speechless as she gaped up to the window with a deep sense of longing. She hadn't seen her mother in so long. Her last memory of her was not of her face, not even of her voice, but of the feeling of their hands as they held each other one night, when Riley was too ill to so much as open her eyes.

Riley called out to her over and over again. She fought frustration from her voice as her mother proceeded to ignore her.

"…Riley? Um…Riley?"

Belatedly, Riley turned to face Joy, and she felt something inside of her drop.

Joy was shaking her head.

"…If…if you're in _here_ …she won't be able to hear you, from out _there_."

Riley clenched her hands into fists. "But where _is_ 'here'? Where are we?"

She was getting sick of asking questions. She was ready for answers.

Before Joy could attempt again to fabricate an answer, her mother sniffled. It had been hard to tell, at first, that this had been the sound she had made, but Riley admitted with a cramp in her chest that her mother was crying as she spoke.

 _"…Oh…oh, she…she's beautiful…"_

Riley flinched as though she'd been struck as her father appeared in the view to her mother's left. To her despair, he was in tears as well. Tears didn't suit him. Not at all. His face was red and his lips were swollen. Riley almost couldn't stand to look.

 _"…Ten little fingers,"_ he was saying, _"…ten little toes…yup...she's perfect, alright."_

Her mother wept, trying to form more words around her quiet, muted cries.

 _"…she looks just like Riley…"_

The words stole Riley's breath from her lips. Her eyes widened, darkened…she couldn't move. Everything was starting to hurt.

Joy shuddered. The sound of this snapped Riley out of her daze. Her eyes fluttered to Joy's position, where they found her standing before an oddly-shaped white sculpture with a translucent bulb of sorts on its top. Joy was regarding the strange instrument with shaking eyes. She seemed to be attempting to build a puzzle without touching any of the pieces. Her lips began to part.

"…I don't understand. Is this…is this the _console?_ But it's so small. It's just like it was years and years ago." Joy realized that Riley was looking at her, and she swallowed. "…I'm sorry, Riley. There's so much to explain, and I'm…I'm trying to figure this out. Really. I thought we were in _your_ head at first, but now I—"

"—In my head?"

Riley's voice stooped into what was almost a whisper. "...in my head...So…When you said, _inside_ …when you said, ' _in here_ '…you meant inside my _head?"_

Joy looked back to the window. Riley helplessly followed her gaze, staring back into her parent's tear-ridden faces. "…Yes…that's right. I can't imagine how crazy that must sound to you. But – but now, I'm not so sure _where_ we are. It just doesn't feel right, here. It feels so…different." Joy was tucking her hands up before her chest, wringing her fingers together.

 _"…Welcome home, Taylor,"_ Mom was saying through her tears. _"Mom loves you so much."_

Taylor.

 _Taylor_.

 _Who was Taylor?_

Riley turned to Joy desperately, but could not catch her eye this time. Joy had lowered her eyes back down to what she had called the _console_ with a new curiosity ignited behind her eyes. Her right hand began to reach for the smooth globe that rested so neatly on top of the simple device she stood in front of.

Dad was lifting a set of tiny, pudgy fingers to his lips to kiss them. Riley looked down to her own hand in response; she could practically feel his stubble against her own hand as he did so. A lump formed in Riley's throat.

 _"Daddy's already crazy about you."_

Joy's hand dipped; the globe revealed itself to have been a button. A sunny glow infused itself from inside of it as she pressed down, and a pleasant ringing tone played on the air around them

From outside, a baby cheerfully cooed, and Riley and Joy shot their eyes up to the window.

Mom and Dad smiled and laughed sorrowfully above them.

 _"There she is. There's my brand new happy girl."_

 _"Riley is alive inside of you, Taylor."_

 _"That's right. She's in our hearts...And she's in yours too."_

 _"We love you."_

Riley watched them.

Listened.

Looked down to the uncanny nature of her hands.

Gazed around her and her strange, empty surroundings.

"…Joy?"

Slowly, Riley closed her eyes, and she shuddered.

"…Am I dead?"


	2. Little Tiny Dreams

_Aaaaaand we're back! x.x That was torture. Stupid server issues. Thanks FF . net people for working to get us back online!_

 _A huge thanks to all of the unexpected love for the first chapter of this fic! I will definitely do my very best to update each chapter in a timely fashion. c: I appreciate your kind words and the favs and follows. Hope it continues to satisfy._

 _Thank you again for popping in to read!_  
 _~KQSimply_

* * *

The nothingness around her was beginning to evolve.

Riley watched in awe as a series of colourful fans and wheels took up a bright, glowing marble rolling down two sets of rails that had materialized from nowhere. Her eye managed to catch the faces of her parents inside the globe, but it was quickly obscured from her view amid peculiar, Rude Goldberg Machine-like devices that carried it away to rest at the top of a shelving unit.

This place – the inner factory of someone's mind, she dared to think, now that Joy had planted the idea in her head – was very clearly alive, and eager to be that way.

It was _magical_.

She wanted to love everything to do with this place as the colours spread and swelled around her, but as she turned her eyes back to the window, focusing on the sight of her parents as they doted over the one they'd named Taylor, a deep-seated heaviness clouded over her heart instead.

Joy approached her from the left. Her eyes, though large and everlastingly charming, seemed grave and apologetic. She folded her hands in front of herself, eyes gently flitting all around her as she composed her words, few as they were.

"I'm…I'm so sorry, Riley."

Riley shivered.

So…it was true.

…Unless this _was_ a dream…

But somehow, she knew it wasn't.

Somehow, Riley knew she was gone. Here, somehow, but ultimately gone.

Knowing hurt. It hurt so badly that she couldn't hold her head up anymore.

"…What I wouldn't have done to make it all go away," Joy went on to say. "I kept telling the doctors that they were wrong, that you still had so much left inside of you. I could just feel it. And every day, even though things seemed to be getting worse, you just kept fighting. You were unstoppable." Joy's eyes began to sparkle and shine. "I'm so proud of you. No matter how things turned out, I'm so incredibly proud of you. I think you did _amazing_ out there."

Riley turned away from the window and away from Joy. Her eyes were dark and empty as she numbly began to walk, folding her arms over her chest.

 _But I wasn't finished yet._

I had so much left to do.

I had places to go.

Things to say.

I had life.

I'm _dead._

Her former confusion boiled down to a steady ache that throbbed deep inside of her.

For a long, long time, neither Riley, nor Joy, could speak again.

The white light from around them eventually subdued, as shutters above and below the window began to dip sleepily toward one another. When they closed, the vivid activity in this place decelerated to a stop. Tiny lights on the various new surfaces that had materialized from the dark softly blinked in time with the comforting sounds of a baby's slumbering breath.

Joy closed her eyes as she let the steady sound draw around her like a soft blanket. Unaware that Riley was watching her, she smiled and calmly inhaled.

"…Everything feels just like did at the very beginning," she whispered. "Everything is soft, precious, and new. Everything is beautiful. _So beautiful._ It's almost too much to take in all at once. But I want more. I want so much more." Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked over to Riley. "…The older you got, the more exciting things became. I really loved growing up with you. I looked forward to each and every day, and I was always determined to make each one better than the last. But, you know…? Another part of me was always happy to look back on moments like this one right here. Moments when everything was so gentle and fresh. I always wished we could come back some day…just you, and me, and a brand new world ahead of us. Nothing more."

Joy tilted her head, eyes glittering, and her smile flourished. "…and now…here we are."

Riley looked downward, still so uncertain of what to make of all of this. Curiosity and grief were still struggling for ownership of her, inside. She had questions, a _million_ questions, but right now, she could only focus on how badly she wanted to cry.

It was as she confirmed this in silence to herself that a new series of haze and light began to cultivate from the shade in front of her, blending a brand new form together.

Joy, quick and excitable on her feet, rushed to stand close to the spectacle, waiting eagerly for it to take shape with her hands drawn into eager fists.

Out of this latest mist stepped a new, timid character who blinked her downcast cerulean eyes and rose a small, chubby hand to fix the position of her enormous circular glasses. She moved with a peculiar grace, slow and placid, reminding Riley of a quiet brook, or a modest Autumn rainfall. The girl who had emerged was short and plump, her body a shade of chilly, dampening blue. She was nothing at all like Joy. The two were blatant opposites in both their appearance and their behaviour, but to tell from the way they embraced the moment she fully came to realize her existence, Riley knew that they couldn't have been closer friends.

"Oh, Joy," she whined softly, closing her eyes as Joy brought her arms tightly around the other. Her voice was husky and pitifully soft. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"I was getting a little worried too, to be honest," Joy replied, giving her shoulders a final squeeze before she straightened up. She swept tears away from the other's round cheeks with her thumbs. "But I think everything's alright now. I knew it would be. See?"

Joy's little friend began to toss her eyes around, pausing on this vague detail, or that, never quite reaching Riley's position. "…It's like we've gone back in time," she mused softly, tapping her fingers together before the large rim of her comfortable-looking cable-knit sweater. "…Could this be a brand new Headquarters?" She moaned softly when Joy neglected to reply, and began to toil actively with her hands, now. "I knew it was going to happen eventually…When everything started to fade, I was so worried that we were going to be…" Her eyes suddenly doubled in size. "What about the others? A-are they here? Did they make it?"

Joy winced. To tell from her voice, she was working hard to stay positive about this particular matter. "Well…so far, it's just us. But if it's anything like before, the others _should_ be arriving soon. Hopefully."

Riley now had a million and _one_ questions, but she remained quiet as she watched the scene before her unfold.

Joy's friend lowered her head dejectedly. "But what are the odds that we'll all end up re-appearing in the exact same place? They could end up in a completely different Headquarters…or…or…" Her voice trembled. "…maybe they won't reappear _at all…"_

Joy took her hand, with that, and began to lead her forward. Toward Riley. "Hey, let's not focus on what might go wrong. We just need to stick together and try to be patient. The others will be okay. You'll see. I'm sure of it." She grinned. "In the meantime…there's someone else here that I'd love for you to meet."

She looked up to Joy, and her worry seemed to dissipate. "Really?"

Joy nodded, and gestured straight ahead of her.

Riley straightened, tucking one of her hands into the other as the blue figure drew a startled breath and began to toddle up to her inquisitively, her eyes pensive and narrow. Riley had always been a little awkward when it came to introductions, even before this tiny cast of dreamlike women. She and the other spent a brief, silent moment simply gazing at another with their hands folded before their own bellies.

"Riley," said Joy, when it seemed apparent that the silence wasn't about to break itself, "this is Sadness."

 _Sadness_.

This whole experience was so bizarre. Perhaps her earlier suspicion about Joy had not been so farfetched.

Perhaps these really were personified emotions. She'd never envisioned they'd appear so...familiar. Or human-like.

Sadness offered up the sweetest of little grins. She locked spellbound eyes with Riley, and, without having to say a word, Riley felt the same degree of affection Joy had expressed through her unique exhilaration and ecstasy. Sadness's love was a different class altogether. Her heart must have been enormous to radiate so much love and adoration without having to utter a sound.

"Riley?" she did eventually whisper. "…Hi."

"Hi," came the bewildered reply.

Sadness looked her up and down, eagerly returning her eyes back up to Riley's when she was through. "You…you seem so much better. You don't look like you're in any pain anymore."

"No," said Riley softly. "It doesn't hurt anymore." She hesitated, feeling adrift as she looked down to her shoes "Or, at least…my body, or whatever, doesn't hurt. Not like it did before."

Sadness looked to Riley's hands as they twisted within themselves, before she gazed up once again. The tiny smile playing on her lips began to wilt. Her eyes deepened, becoming rich with empathy. "…Before was _awful_ ," she muttered, her voice low and somber. "It was almost a relief to let go, wasn't it?"

Riley closed her eyes. "…I think so. I don't really remember."

"Oh…I do. I remember when everything started to feel quiet and thin. The pain just sort of went away. It was a little scary at first, because we'd never felt anything like it so suddenly, before, but it was nice, too, after hurting for so long. It felt nice to just let everything fade away, and…you know, let go."

Sadness extended her hand and lay it across both of Riley's, who blinked as a tremendous weight suddenly gathered itself over her heart.

"…I'm sorry all the same that you died, Riley."

Everything inside of her became tender and vulnerable beneath Sadness's kindhearted hand as it soothed across the backs of her knuckles. Helplessly, she thought of her mother, and her father, her friends, her accomplishments, her dreams…

"…You didn't get to say goodbye…"

Riley's eyes brimmed with tears.

"…I understand…I'm sad, too..."

Riley tried to take a breath, to force something off of her tongue that might override the crushing weight inside of her, but there were simply no words to help her recover. Riley choked on her tears and broke down at long last, lowering her face into her hands. She fought desperately to stifle her cries, but as Sadness gently encouraged her to kneel so that she might be pulled into her warm, compassionate arms, her tears doubled in severity and could not be stopped.

It was a cruel sort of paradox to mourn the loss of her own self. It felt greedy and egocentric, but it also felt so, _so_ good to cry her heart out anyway.

"I want to go back home," Riley whispered, as she finally pulled away. Her sobs subsided, leaving her with an embarrassing case of the hiccups that Sadness was fast to forgive.

"I know," Sadness said, with a slow, perceptive nod. She turned to the window, which was beginning to brighten again. "But…I think we _are_ home."

Riley followed Sadness's gaze to the window as well, and her lips involuntarily parted. A mysterious display was taking place there; the drowsy sensation of being rocked underwater embraced her as she watched.

There were colours, lights and shadows, vague shapes and sounds. A baby's hands reached out from beyond the edges of the frosted frame. There were Mom's eyes, Dad's lips. Their voices permeated the soft serenity of the display. The things they spoke were unintelligible, but they were endearing and addictive all the same. Riley dried her eyes and watched, star-struck by the curious, beautiful quality of the spectacle.

"…oh, Riley…" Joy's voice came from a short distance away. Having given Sadness and Riley their space, she had settled herself in a nest of pillows and cushions that seemed to have accompanied Sadness's arrival, gazing up to the window lovingly too. "You used to have dreams _just like this._ I loved them so much. I know the circumstances aren't perfect but…it's so amazing to get to share them with you now. You'll come watch with me, won't you? …Please?"

Before she knew it, Riley and Sadness both had crossed the distance, coming to nestle down with Joy amid the softness of the pillows she'd gathered, and the three of them beheld the charming spectacle as it floated above their heads.

 _A dream,_ Riley thought.

She wished it was her own. She wished there was a chance she too could wake up somehow.

There was still the possibility that she would, she supposed…but thinking this way left her feeling exhausted. She was just too tired to keep fighting. She'd done enough of that when she was sick.

Alive.

"…Whose dreams do you suppose these belong to?" Sadness asked of no one in particular.

It was Riley who carefully answered.

"…Taylor. Her name is Taylor."

"Oh." A little pause. "…Who's Taylor?"

And again, Riley answered, her eyes focused steadily on the five tiny fingers of the baby's right hand as they reached and curled at the imaginary fluffy matter her dreams were made out of.

"…I…I think she's my baby sister."

Sadness took one of Riley's hands, filling her again with grief…

…Joy took the other, blending grief with just a pinch of hope.


	3. Attention Seeking Songs

_Hello, all. Thanks to the kind response I've received, I'm hoping to update this story every other day if I can manage it!_

 _Thanks to all of those who have chosen to follow - I hope it continues to please. c:_

 _~KQSimply_

* * *

A brief, impulsive thrill fired through Riley's system as she realized that she was waking up.

It was quickly overridden by the unpleasant sounds of a baby's cry and the recollection of where she was. Somewhere in the night between Sadness and Joy, she had fallen asleep.

Her spirits deflated.

Groggily, Riley sat up, searching for the source of the distressing sound, quickly greeted by the oval window and the early morning light that poured through it. Sadness's silhouette stood on tip-toe at the very center of things, relentlessly working the single button of the console. Blinking curiously, Riley stood and joined her at her side.

"…Sadness?"

"Oh…good morning, Riley." Nothing sounded _good_ about it. Sadness frowned sappily up to her before slowly turning back to the window, using the full weight of her upper body to press the button down again. While Joy drew a cheerful, golden light from the button when she operated the device, it seemed Sadness was only able to produce the colour blue.

"…Um…What are you doing, exactly?" Riley prodded as the baby's cries only worsened. "I think you're upsetting her."

Sadness sighed despairingly. "Yeah. Taylor's hungry, so I figured we should probably cry."

Well…Riley supposed that made sense. Taylor was only a baby. It was weird and very frustrating to exist in a position where everyone was coherent and self-aware, but that they could do so little to communicate this to the world outside of this place.

Riley winced against a particularly shrill cry and looked down to the console. It's large, bulbous button was very tempting, suddenly.

"Can I try?"

Sadness glanced up to her and her suggestion, prompting Riley to try to explain herself. "I may not remember much of this, but I've been through all of this before. Right? Who knows. Maybe I can help."

After a little consideration, Sadness swallowed audibly and released her hands from the console, letting her blue light die away. "Uh…I suppose so."

Taylor's cries lowered by a few merciful decibels as the two traded places. Riley took a breath, rubbed her palms together, and carefully placed both of them across the smooth circumference of the button on the console. She pressed down.

Nothing happened. No light, no pleasant ringing tones…no response from Taylor. Riley's shoulders eased.

"Oh…that's disappointing," said Sadness quietly. "I kind of wanted to know what emotion _you_ would produce. I bet it would have been pretty neat…but it looks like nothing happened."

"…Yeah. Guess not."

Riley looked down to her hands and released the breath she realized she'd been holding. A part of her had been hoping that perhaps she'd be able to speak _through_ Taylor this way, somehow. Now, she realized the thought had probably been a little impractical. She didn't know the first thing about this contraption, after all.

The solution to this was clear: it was time to start asking questions and acquiring some answers.

"…So…what exactly does this thing do?"

Sadness looked at it. "The console? …Well…It's sort of what we use when we want to we reach out. You know. So that we can be felt. You had one just like it in your Headquarters when you were her age. Yours was a little bit different, but it's mostly the same, I guess."

"Weird." Riley shook herself a little. She'd always imagined something a little more organic than this, when imagining how things worked in her own head. "How does it work?"

"It's kind of complicated." Sadness began to worm her way back to the center of the device. "I think it's better if I just show you."

She frowned and pushed the button down once more to Riley's dismay, returning the blue light beneath her palms.

Taylor resumed her cries with vigor.

Riley shrunk, amazed that such a tiny little baby could produce so much _noise_.

Joy finally sat up from her nest of pillows and groaned, running a hand through her disheveled hair. "Good grief. I didn't exactly miss _this."_ Quickly, she rose to her feet and looked up to the window, checking her surroundings.

It wasn't long before bright lights of the hallway entered the bedroom, suddenly; Riley's breath caught in her throat as her mother hastily entered the view. The world around them grew warm, suddenly, as Taylor was nestled snug against her chest.

"Ah…finally. There she is." Joy stared fondly up to Mom's eyes. She and Sadness exchanged positions without having to watch their feet, as though they could read each other's minds.

 _"My goodness,"_ Mom was saying in a hushed, pleasant voice. _"What a fuss you're making."_ She wrapped a new blanket around her, pulling Taylor very close to her body. _"There, now. How's that? Better? Poor little Early Bird."_

With that, Joy leaned her hands down on the console and kept them there, while the soft sounds of suckling filled the air. She sighed, inclining her head, twisting one foot into the floor. Joy looked as though she could have stayed in this position forever.

"…I _did_ miss this," she whispered. "I let so many of these kinds of memories fade, but I never forgot how warm and nice it all was. I still can't believe we get to do it all over again."

Mom was looking straight into the window. Directly at Riley, it seemed.

 _"Look at you,"_ she was saying _. "You have your daddy's nose, and I think, fingers crossed, you'll have mommy's hair…but you have Riley's everything. You're so pretty. She would have been so proud of you."_

While before, these words would have left her feeling gutted, this time they injected Riley with an encouraging stream of pride. A new desperation woke inside of her to hear her mother say words like this over and over again. She felt willing to do anything to make it known that she was much closer than the world believed she was.

"It's me, Mom," Riley uttered as she paced forward. Sadness and Joy turned to her. "You can see me so clearly because I'm right here. I never left. Not really"

Taylor was lowered back into her bassinet, satisfied and drowsy again. As the lights in her room dimmed and her eyes sleepily dipped and closed, Riley folded her arms, as though trying to keep warm, in spite of how warm she already felt.

"…I'll find a way to tell you somehow, Mom. I promise."

Sadness had been about to approach Riley again, as though irresistibly drawn to her welling sensations of sorrow, when Joy suddenly dashed away from the console.

"–Joy?"

"Someone's coming!"

Riley quickly turned, following Joy's scampering figure to the murky backdrop of Headquarters, where a new form was indeed beginning to build itself from the air. She vaguely recalled that Joy and Sadness had been referring to 'the others' all along, but caught up in her distress as she had been, she hadn't fully processed that there could possibly be anymore to this strange universe. Her eyes danced as iridescent particles compiled themselves in the air, folding together into a new, living essence.

Riley couldn't have been less prepared for the appearance of this one, as he drew his first tremulous breath and hastily strung his fingers into a tight, anxious knot. His eyes, wide and overly calculative, made up the majority of his head, sprouting from which rose a prehensile antenna of sorts that began to coil above his brow as he fretfully threw his gaze to and fro. Though his body could have been described as a solicitous shade of violet, something about it was off-putting, like the fine edge of a poorly understood, unpleasant shadow. He was the opposite of Joy and Sadness combined – thin, awkward and crouched, as though he wanted nothing to do with his surroundings but could concern himself with nothing else.

The instant his eyes found Joy's, however, relief loosened his every muscle and he practically fell into her arms. Sadness too, once she had pattered over to him.

"Joy! Sadness! Oh, thank goodness – I didn't know _what_ to expect!" He drew away from them, wringing his hands as he passed his eyes between the other two. "That was _terrible_. The last thing I remember was how dark everything was getting, and then realizing that you guys couldn't hear me anymore. I could've sworn it was the end."

Joy winced, and immediately, he read into it. "Unless—" The nearly comical situation of his face shifted very suddenly; his massive eyes darkened and his thin shoulders began to collapse. "Oh, no…"

Sadness settled a hand upon his elbow.

"Oh _no_ …don't tell me…Riley…d-did she…?" He rose a finger, unable to decide who to lock eyes with more. "…she didn't _die_ , did she?"

Joy folded her hands together. Her frown expressed everything. "…I'm so sorry to have to tell you like this," she said gently amid his rising devastation. "There really wasn't anything you could have done – it just wasn't in our hands. But everything's okay now."

" _What?_ 'Okay'?! This is as far away from 'okay' as it can get!" He began to pace back and forth frenziedly, like a caged animal, starting a new sentence each time he changed direction. "Poor Riley – how could I have let this happen? – if only I had panicked more – I knew I should've been driving – the doctors said we had more time – I wasn't prepared – b-but –oh, Riley, _why_ –"

"Hey, hey…calm down," Joy said, managing to snatch him by the shoulders. "It really _is_ okay."

"No, no it is _not_. Riley's _gone_. _Riley_. _Our_ Riley. I had one job to do and I let everybody down. I let her slip right through my—"

Joy couldn't help but chuckle at the calamity of a display he was putting on as she stepped aside and gestured behind her. "See for yourself! Riley's right over here."

Pausing, he glanced over to Riley and heaved an big sigh, wiping his brow with a skinny wrist. "Ohhh, right over there. Sweet mercy, what a _relief_." He grinned and nodded wearily, letting a sort of drunken giddiness take over for a while as his panic dwindled away.

And then he double-took.

He stammered nonsensically, pointing to Riley, and then to the window, and then at the console, before his legs gave out beneath him and he crumpled to the floor like a string on its end.

"Oh, gosh, that's a record." Joy and Sadness lowered to their knees and fanned the air around his face as Riley made her cautious approach, feeling somewhat responsible for rendering their friend unconscious. To judge by Sadness and Joy's quick response, however, it seemed like this was somewhat of a practiced ritual.

"Er – is he okay?"

"Definitely. He's, uh, he's always been the fainter of the bunch. Right Sadness?"

"Right."

His eyes fluttered as he came to, and he murmured incessantly as they dragged him back to his feet and lead his attention – _very_ carefully – to Riley once more. His consciousness threatened to slip again, but Joy insisted with a firm jostle that he stay awake. "Relax! It's just fine," she vowed. "I promise."

He flicked wide eyes at Joy as though questioning her sanity as she directed him to stand close enough to Riley that a proper introduction could take place. First, however, his eyes stirred all over her, assessing her thoroughly from top to bottom. When he could be sure she was safe, he regained some semblance of composure and straightened slightly, nearly proving that he could have been quite tall if only he wasn't so cowardly.

"Riley…is that _really_ you? I-I can't believe my eyes. I never thought we'd meet face-to-face. This is so _surreal_."

"Tell me about it," Riley muttered. She couldn't help but grin just a little.

He nervously cleared his throat, wiping his palms off on his houndstooth sweater vest before extending his arm toward her. "Oh, uh – I'm Fear."

Riley didn't have the heart to tell him she'd already sort of gathered. "Er, hi. Sorry if I startled you earlier."

"Not a problem; happens all the time." He chuckled self-consciously.

She reached for Fear's hand and they awkwardly shook.

Riley's heart rate kicked into overdrive. Her breath caught in her throat. A chill twisted up her spine, suggesting with a series of sinister whispers that someone or something could've been directly behind her, breathing down her neck. Her eyes bounced back and forth as she connected some dots in her head; her hand, meanwhile, trembled as it remained in Fear's grasp.

A part of her suddenly twisted itself into knots with concern over Taylor's welfare.

Fear quickly snatched his hand away, questioning her with his eyes, wondering, perhaps, if he had hurt her. The instant he released her, her anxiety dispersed.

Riley glanced to the window, noting that Taylor seemed to be just fine. She'd had nothing to worry about. A sigh of relief cleared her lungs, and Fear quickly understood that he was quite off the hook.

His pupils fell to examine the hand he had been holding, and surprisingly enough, a grin suddenly appeared on his face.

"Hey, look at that! It's completely gone."

Riley looked down to her hand breathlessly, fanning out her fingers. "What's gone?"

"The wound from your IV." He gestured to the back of her hand, looking pleased. "It healed over just fine, just like Mom said it would. I was so worried she was wrong. I should've known better."

She hummed softly, rolling up her sleeve to reveal the odd, stippled material of her arm. It dawned on Riley that she _had_ been worried about that, in spite of her mother's relentless assertion that it would eventually mend one day. "Oh. You're right. It _is_ gone." She grinned. "I guess Mom was right."

"Isn't she always? There's not even a scar anymore. That's good. Well…as good as it can be, I suppose, given the circumstances." The antenna suspended above his brow began to curl counter-clockwise, hiding itself behind his shoulders. It seemed to compulsorily follow his shifts in behavior, like a dog's tail, though not nearly as active. It was peculiarly charismatic. Something about its position now, however, caused her to feel a touch of pity for him. "I'm really sorry about all of this, Riley. I can't believe that after thirteen years of keeping you safe, I just let it… _happen."_

She wasn't sure how on earth this could have been his fault.

"I know I overreacted when we first found out we were sick. That wasn't wise of me at all. I don't know where my head was that day. I'm sorry about that too. It was just so much to take in. It didn't seem possible. You lead a healthy lifestyle, you were careful, you always washed your hands, and you were just a kid. So…w-when they said it was _terminal_ …I got scared. I got really, _really_ scared."

Riley's brow began to curve as she recalled the dreadful feeling of falling she'd experienced the day they told her and her family how serious her illness was. The way the words beat her into a stupefied little pulp. She'd wanted to wake up _then_ one hundred times more than she wanted to wake up _now_.

It was amazing to think that she had felt this way because of the eccentric individual standing in front of her.

"It took all of my strength to keep myself from driving, after that. Knowing that you were suffering was a kind of torture in and of itself, but knowing just as well that making you feel scared was only going to make matters worse…w-well…" He fumbled his hands over themselves. "…I just couldn't bring myself to do that to you. You were going through enough. Besides, any time I stood back and saw how brave you were being without me…I was reminded of how much of an inspiration you've always been to me." He glanced down to his slender fingers. "…I hope you can forgive me for this someday, Riley."

A warm smile graced Riley's face. "If you're seriously going to insist that you have a reason to apologize, Fear, I think already know exactly how you can make it up to me."

"You do?"

"Uh huh." She carefully pinched the button of his sleeve and led up him to the console. Joy and Sadness followed suit.

Fear opened his mouth to ask the million-dollar question – Riley spoke directly over him. "This is Taylor," she said, closing Fear's mouth for him. "She's my little sister." Riley carefully set a hand on Fear's shoulder, realizing that so long as she came in contact with his clothes and not his violet particles, she wouldn't have to feel the discomfort of his essence. "And it looks like I'm going to be staying in here with her. Here in – you know – this place."

"…Headquarters?"

"Yeah. Headquarters. Thanks, Sadness."

"You're welcome."

"So…since I'm in here, and not out there…I guess that means I'm going to need a little help making sure that things go well for Taylor, and that she stays…you know, safe." She glanced meaningfully at Fear, whose eyes began to brighten. "…Think you can do that for me?"

Fear's wiry antenna sprang up above his brow. "Wow…Riley…Of course I would. I'd be honoured to. You'd _seriously_ trust me with your kid sister, a-after what I let happen to _you?"_

Riley nodded confidently. "You went against everything you believed in to let me be brave when things couldn't have been worse for me. You're exactly the kind of emotion I'd want for her."

She passed her blue eyes over all of the individuals that had come to gather in Taylor's mind thus far.

"…You _all_ are."

Joy could hardly contain herself, beaming so brightly that her faerie-like aura seemed to double in size. Sadness was deeply touched, and couldn't resist yet another one of her sweet, endearing smiles. And Fear—

Fear dove onto the console when the sound of a door slamming shut jarred _everyone_ fully awake, repeatedly jamming the single button down in perfect time with Taylor's rapid little heartbeat.

"What the HECK was _that?!"_

Everyone winced when Taylor started to bawl.

"Yep," said Riley through her teeth. "He'll be perfect for her, alright."


	4. Strange Bitter Lights

_Hiya! Sorry for the slight delay! I'm still hoping to swing an update once every other day but life still comes and happens sometimes, whomp :c_

 _Thanks again for all of the favs and follows - I really hope everyone continues to enjoy as the story develops. I promise it'll pick up faster and faster as we fill Headquarters up. I'd also like to extend a very special thanks to the individual who recommended Passed On on TV Tropes. Holy smokes that's flattering. :'3_

 _You're all wonderful! I love being a part of the IO fandom because of artists, authors and readers out there like you guys :'D_

 _~KQSimply_

* * *

 _"…Riley?..."_

She reluctantly moaned.

 _"Psst. Hey. Riley?"_

The sepia sunniness of her dream was fading; a faint awareness began to stir in the distance that she didn't want to come to terms with so soon. Her dream was lovely…they were visiting the city park in the summer, discussing details of an upcoming road trip over ice cream. Mom was all smiles, and Dad was laughing…and Riley was holding somebody else's very tiny, very messy, very sticky hand.

Everything was vivid, alive, and perfect. It was _supposed_ to be like this.

 _Why did she have to die before it could come true?_

 _Why?_

She didn't want to so much as acknowledge that something was pulling her from this world to another.  
 _  
"Riiileyyy?"_

But she couldn't resist forever. The fabric of her dreams wore thin and eventually split apart. She peeled her eyes open and almost – _almost_ , mind you; she was too unimpressed to actually do it – gave a start when two enormous eyes hovering an inch or so from her face confronted her as she woke up.

Fear blinked.

"Are you asleep?"

"No…?"

"Ah, gotcha. I couldn't sleep either."

Riley scoffed, running an irate hand down her face.

"No sense trying to force it; insomnia's a formidable foe that way. You should get up. There's something I want to show you." He beamed at her, tapping both sets of fingers together. "I found something earlier and I think you're _really_ going to like it."

Knowing better than to touch her by now, Fear carefully took her around the wrist where the cuff of her sweater would protect her from what they had all come to call the Overflow – the phenomenon which transferred the emotion they epitomized to Riley, prompted or otherwise uncalled for. Riley didn't mind at all when Joy touched her; in fact, Riley couldn't get enough of her. If only she could keep Joy in her palm all day long, somehow – that way, she'd feel like herself all day long. Sadness and Fear, on the other hand, made the environment feel a little too... _heavy_ for her, she claimed. Unwarranted sorrow took too much of a toll on her heart for no reason, and the perception of fear, especially spontaneous lurches of it without any necessity, was extremely unpleasant. The pair of them resolved to be more careful around her.

Riley continued to groan as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes with one hand while Fear helped her to her feet by the other (they were still stuck sleeping out in the open on either one of two sofas or in nests of pillows and blankets).

"This isn't about some new mind manual or something, is it?" Her arm became the thing that tethered them together as Fear tugged her away from the Headquarters forefront. "Because I'm gonna be honest with you: they're really not as cool as you keep saying they are."

"Hey. Mind manuals may be an acquired taste, but they're pretty darned useful. You'll see what I'm talking about someday when they get us out of a pickle. And there _will_ be pickles. Lots and lots of pickles. Trust me." He issued her ahead of him and began to fuss with, of all things, the dusty air high above his head. "Anyway, that's not what I wanted to show you. Gimmie a second, here – I just have to find it again." Riley furrowed her brow, prepared to question him when he made a delighted sound of discovery and closed his fists around a silk cord suspended in the air that she hadn't noticed before.

Fear grinned and pulled it downward. The darkness behind them parted like a marvelous theatrical curtain.

"Check out the view, Riley."

A twilight-like radiance climbed into Headquarters through a series of several large egg-shaped windows, polishing the surfaces of previously non-existent walls as it illuminated them. Riley arched her arm to shield her eyes; though the light was still rather low-key, her eyes had gotten so accustomed to the darkness that previously dominated Headquarters that they were quite bothered, and in addition, this was a light that was like no other. There was something magical and dreamlike about its quality that painted a bright smile across Riley's face.

The appearance of windows at last granted this place the feeling of being a home – a home that dwelled in the most otherworldly place of places. Riley gazed through the glass, her eyes alight with wonder as she passed them over the scene of a deep canyon that burrowed into the vast, seemingly uninhabited landscape stretched out around them. This was how Riley came to learn that Headquarters was developing into a giant tower.

 _"_ Whew! _That_ definitely makes it a lot less gloomy in here." Fear drew his knuckles close to his chest as he joined Riley's side at the window. "But how about _this_ , huh? Looks like things are really shaping up out there." He pressed a finger against the glass, leaning in close to Riley in order to better direct her attention. "The shelves down in Long-Term Memory are starting to fill in a little in the outliers, there; that's a good sign. I'd say Taylor's developing right on schedule. And, uh, let's see – _ah_ , I bet those fellas over there will be working on the plans for the remaining cars of Taylor's Train of Thought. I kind of hope her train model will have a _quieter_ horn than yours did. Er, no offence, Riley." He gestured a little farther to the west, helping Riley spot a team of tiny bean-shaped creatures heading out of view. One of them happened to notice he was being gawked at; he gave a friendly, casual salute before continuing on his way. Riley waved feebly in return, a bemused smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.

Fear stood back, using the thumb and index finger of either hand to form the shape of a rectangle. He stretched his arms out ahead of his shoulders, closing one eye to peer through the makeshift viewfinder he'd made for himself. "Yes, sir…And I think Taylor's first Island of Personality will look perfect right about _there_."

Riley turned around. "Okay – Joy mentioned _Personality Islands_ a while back. Those are the things made from…wait, don't tell me. They're called… _Core Memories_ , right?"

"Bingo."

"And they're going to make up Taylor's personality?"

"Precisely. Say, you're getting pretty good at this."

She was flattered; it certainly hadn't been easy for her. Joy, Sadness and Fear were still using weird terms she could never prepare for. Riley's teachers didn't teach her _any_ of this in science class. _I knew those labs were a huge waste of time_ , she thought with an innermost grin. While learning new things about Taylor's mind was exciting, it was a little overwhelming too. Seeing for herself that Taylor was developing regardless of how much (or little) she understood, however, alleviated most of the stress of trying to learn everything at once.

Riley was thrilled with Taylor's progress. She eyed the console, which had evolved over the last few weeks and had a total of six buttons, now, and she grinned, brimming with courage.

Someday, and someday soon, at the rate her little sister was growing, Riley was going to find a way to use Taylor to communicate with the outside world, proving to it that she was not as far away as it currently believed.

Someday, Riley was going to _master_ that console. She could just feel it.

* * *

When the fuzzy image of Dad entered Taylor's field of vision later that morning, Riley's shoulders drooped.

He seemed tired lately. Only, he didn't. The empty look in his eye became more and more complicated to determine as time wore on. Riley was really beginning to dislike it.

A special glimmer had been there there, once. It _had_ been there. Riley could prove this to herself over and over again if she wished, by replaying some of the memories Joy generated over the last few months, whenever Taylor and Dad locked eyes with one another. _There it is,_ she thought assuredly to herself whenever she caught sight it inside of these sunshiny globes. She would pause the memory's footage and focus, _hard_ , noting the blatant difference of the twinkle in his eye now versus then.

In spite of Taylor's various recent accomplishments – she could sit up, crawl, and grab things (with a little effort) – the special glimmer reserved just for her seemed to be fading fast, veiling Dad's eyes behind unpleasant storm clouds, rendering them icy and cold.

Every day she glimpsed it, Riley's spirits ran lower and lower.

For the first few weeks of trying to comprehend the change in her father, Riley felt positive she was the only one who had noticed it. Joy and Fear seemed blissfully unaware; whenever Dad was near, Joy would lean her hands onto the console and produce a wealth of smiles and giggles for him. Fear would simply fold his hands behind his back, confident that Dad would protect Taylor from pretty much anything. Sadness, meanwhile, remained as quiet as she normally did, content to watch as scenes unfolded for the most part.

It was maddeningly painful to keep her concerns to herself, wanting to be sure of her suspicions before she tossed accusations out to the air for the others to chomp at. The suggestion would really upset Fear, and Joy would surely deny it altogether.

But Riley should have known that after all this time, she could have counted on Sadness's wholesome understanding.

She and Sadness locked eyes together that morning, sharing an intimate, enigmatic glance as Dad lowered his hands into the crib, wordlessly pulling Taylor into his arms.

Taylor was beaming at him...unnoticed. Her tiny hands groped at his almost-beard, her palms tickled by his stubble. Dad patiently turned his head away from her.

An iron fist clenched around Riley's insides as Sadness, with only the best of intentions, lay her hand upon Riley's.

 _...Dad...why won't you look at me? I'm right here, Dad. I'm right here._

 _I can hear you breathing, I can feel your heartbeat._

 _I'm here..._

 _I'm right here._

It would be something she and Sadness could share, this upsetting concern of theirs. The other two simply wouldn't understand. Not yet. Riley was itching, now, for a moment to talk to Sadness about it in private, if she could ever seize the opportunity. For now, Riley could only turn her attention back to the window, attempting to find something beyond it to feel good about.

She resisted the temptation to reach out and take Joy's hand. Forcing comfort upon herself wasn't going to change anything.

"C'mon, Daddy, don't be such a spoil-sport," Joy chortled, snorting between breaths. Completely oblivious. "I really missed your beard. It's like every little hair is calling out to us to pull on it. I just _gotta_ pull on it."

Fear shrugged. "I still don't understand the appeal."

"I believe you mean, the ap- _pull._ Ha-ha!"

 _"Boooo."_

Dad continued to dodge Taylor's cheery fingers with practiced expertise. He had stopped in the hallway dividing the dining room and the kitchen; a groan rumbled in his chest. Only Riley, it seemed, managed to catch what he was so frustrated over: Taylor's highchair, which was normally assembled and positioned at the center of the dining table, had been folded up for whatever reason and set against the side of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

 _"Ugh. Just great. You're gonna have to wait a moment, kiddo. I can only do so much with two hands, you know?"_

He lowered Taylor to the floor and began the process of setting the chair up in its proper place in the dining room.

Joy was ecstatic. Even with all of the child locks on the cupboards, she knew there was plenty to explore from the floor of the kitchen. She prompted Taylor to search for something to busy herself with.

Fear, meanwhile, hummed, tapering his giant eyes into slits. "…You know, these expeditions would be a heck of a lot easier if things weren't so blurry. I'm starting to think there's something wrong with the monitor."

"Nah. I'm sure it's fine. Riley was about her age when the monitor started to clear up." Joy blinked. "Er, I think, anyway."

Sadness turned slowly to Riley, who shrugged. "How am I supposed to remember _that_ far back? I don't know how good my eyes were when I was a ten-month old. I think you guys should just let her sit still and wait for Dad to come back."

She glanced sidelong at Sadness, who glanced back at her.

"Aw. That's no fun." Joy had been about to let her hands slide away from the console when something slithered in from the left side of the window and gently booped Taylor on the nose, recoiling an instant after.

This recaptured Joy's attention. "Hey, look everyone! It's Boots! Hi Boots."

"Hiya, Boots."

"Oh, hello, Boots."

Boots, the family cat, moseyed into Taylor's view, dressed to the nines in her black and white tuxedo as always. The Andersen's had acquired her to commemorate the furnishing of their San Francisco home back when it was still considered new. Riley had made Mom and Dad _swear_ to take good care of Boots the day she was admitted to the hospital, and every time she saw Boots roaming around the house, Riley was reminded of how relieved she was that her parents stayed true to their words.

Boots tiptoed evasively around Taylor, pausing before a silver dish tucked into a corner. Taylor, impelled by Joy, crept along after her, coming to sit next to the cat to listen as she bent to take a drink. Joy and Fear crowded themselves tight against the console, transfixed by the cat's tongue as it lapped up the water, and in turn, Taylor leaned in close, fascinated too.

With the three of them sidetracked, Riley finally succumbed to an urge that had been calling her to fall back from the group, where she could attempt to reflect on her father's discomforting behavior in relative peace. She lowered down to the sofa, sighing a grateful sigh as Sadness eventually toddled over to crawl up onto the couch with her.

Sadness quietly twiddled her fingers once she was seated. Her plum body expanded as she took a deep, stabilizing breath. "…He's just not himself lately, is he?"

Riley shook her head. "No. He's not."

"…What do you think it is? Do you think he's working too hard again?"

"I don't know; I remember how he would get when he worked himself too hard. No matter what happened at his job, he was _always_ happy to see me."

"Mmm. Maybe he's still sad. You know…because you passed away."

"…Yeah. Maybe." Riley slid her hands around her forearms. "…But this sort of seems…beyond sad."

"…Depressed?"

Riley shook her head again. "Unhappy."

The two could silently agree that there was, in fact, a subtle difference somehow. It was difficult for either of them to process or explain what this difference was, but they knew it was there, just as they knew there was air directly in front of them to breathe. They didn't have to see or understand it to know that it existed.

Stomaching the thought that Dad was too unhappy to see Riley through Taylor's eyes left tender bruises inside of her that were too deep to soothe.

And then, the greed of her scrutiny caved in on her all at once.

...What was she _thinking_?

Riley wasn't the only one who suffered the dark rejection of his eye.

...Taylor needed him just as badly...didn't she?

It was as the uncomfortable thought was dawning on her that Sadness suddenly tapped her imploringly on the arm. "Riley…look." She pointed behind them, farther still from the console.

Riley's gaze fell back to the grand windows of Headquarters, where the formation of a new cloud cluster swelled in the air to form the incarnate of yet another emotion to inhabit Taylor's mind. She and Sadness stood up and approached the spectacle in star-struck silence as glamorous gusts of emerald glitter spiraled themselves into the guise of a lovely, curvaceous figure. Vibrant eyes of the same colour bat themselves into focus and gave a swift, scrutinizing examination of their surroundings. Her extensive lashes fanned at the air as her entire body, a sickly-sweet class of its own due to its pretty-yet-off-putting shade of green and its alluring-yet-fierce nature, leaned on a discontented angle and gave a muted huff.

At once she folded her arms and closed her eyes. "This is most definitely _not_ Riley's Headquarters." She was attempting to come across as exasperated, but it seemed to Riley as though the cold grip of anxiety had her by the throat, and she was trying with all of her might to simply ignore it. If this was the case, it wasn't resonating well. Still, it was a brave attempt. Riley felt a strong desire to befriend this strong, independent emotion, but for the moment felt too intimidated by her to so much as announce her presence. She was just like the cool kids at her high school.

Sadness, however, fearlessly shuffled over to her, tapping the tips of her fingers together. "Oh, thank goodness. You made it too. I was starting to think you might not."

The eyes of this most fashionable of emotions popped open. That cold grip on her throat from earlier released itself the instant she found Sadness's sapphire eyes. "Sadness? Sadness, it's you!" She threw her arms around the other. Then, she moaned and pulled away, leaving her hands on Sadness's shoulders. "Why didn't you speak up sooner? I was seriously starting to freak out."

"I'm sorry," Sadness stammered, I –"

"What is this place? Where are we?" She straightened again and began to adjust the folds of her green, patterned dress. There were few details about her that weren't green.

"Oh, um, we're inside—"

"Riley didn't _seriously_ die, did she? I mean, sure, that's what it was starting to seem like, and all, but she couldn't have actually, you know, _died_. She's _Riley_. So scratch that. Never mind. What I'd _really_ like to know is what you people did to her Headquarters. What's with this minimal approach? What are we, two year's old all of a sudden?"

"W-well, actually we're—"

Her lips were starting to curl into a truly revolted frown. "And—hold on—what's happening? What _is_ that?"

She paced forward, fanning her hands out from her sides like a graceful tightrope-walker, her eyes perusing the air for visible and nauseating elements floating upon it that nobody else could see.

"No. Oh, _yuck_. I do _not_ like that. Not at _all_."

"What's—?"

"Ohmigod, no—"

Riley watched as she suddenly tore through Headquarters with one hand over her mouth, her other hand outstretched and aimed for the console, where Fear and Joy were caught up in a heated argument over its limited controls.

"I'm telling you, Joy, they're _not_ Cheerios!"

"Th-they _kind of_ look like Cheerios if you really squint, and they're in a bowl—what else could they be?"

"Does that taste _anything_ like a Cheerio to you?"

"Um—well—"

"Spit them out right now!"

"I don't know how to!"

 _SMACK._

The new emotion slammed herself over the console, turning it a vibrant shade of green. She was audibly fighting her gag reflex as she forced a button down.

The utter confusion that once dominated Taylor's poor little face furrowed into one of thorough disgust. Her every naïve instinct screamed at her to learn how to deliberately spit the _not-Cheerios_ out of her mouth.

Joy and Fear gasped simultaneously, their eyes wide. _"Disgust!"_ Broad smiles were spreading across their faces.

Their smiles contagious, Riley grinned a little too. So that's who this new emotion was. _Disgust._ She always thought Disgust would have been more of an instinct rather than an emotion. She'd thought the same of Fear, too. Then again, she never would have dreamt that the inner mechanics of her mind operated in a giant tower above a canyon, either.

Disgust was heaving for breath over the tiny control panel. Her hair, preened to perfection only a few moments ago, was frenzied now, due to her earlier haste, giving her a dangerously crazed look as she rounded her gaze back on the two of them. Fear cowered away from her wrath. "…Cat food?" she hissed through her pearly white teeth. "Are you _serious_? I leave you guys alone for, like, five seconds, and I come back to find our mouths full of c _at food?!"_

Joy, not so much as _half_ as troubled by their scolding as Fear seemed to be, bubbled over and sprang forth, pinning Disgust's arms to her sides. The hug that had been building up for this one turned the green one's vociferous protests into a single breathless squeak. "Disgust! Disgust! You finally came! It's so good to see you again, we were getting so _worried!"_

Disgust writhed an arm free of Joy's iron embrace and stretched her fingers out toward the console again, trying and failing to resume control. It seemed unnecessary by Riley's standards; the device was still green, for one, and for another, Dad's voice was on the air again, causing all heads to turn up to its approach.

 _"Gah, what are you_ _eating_?" He gasped. _"Taylor! No!"_

He suddenly scooped Taylor up, holding her against his side with one arm while the giant fingers of his free hand fished around in her mouth, removing the remainder of kibble from her tongue. It was altogether a very unpleasant experience that Taylor would surely have trouble forgetting.

 _"No, no, no. We don't eat the cat's food. That's yucky. How does your mother _do _this all day?"_

Fear, upright again, had his hands on his hips, casting Joy a look of utter contempt. "I tried to tell her, Disgust," he claimed. "Joy _never_ listens to me." Riley would never have guessed he could muster such an arrogant tone of voice. It was sort of amusing.

Disgust, meanwhile, failed to answer him. Her eyes, suddenly large and grave, were locked onto the window. As though sensing a new urgency reheating inside of her, Joy let go, allowing Disgust to pace up to the console, where she stared up at the window. Her former repulsion was turning into shock.

"…What? _Taylor?"_

Slowly, Disgust turned around to the others, glazing the group with her highly inquisitive eyes. That was when she finally took notice of Riley. Her wide eyes became impossibly wider. Ginger steps lead her to Riley's position. Her delicate hands were rising up to her mouth.

"…Wait…what's going on? How did you…?" A gulp. "Riley…? But...Hold on a minute. You….you didn't _actually_ die…did you?"

Riley winced, stammering An uncomfortable amount of guilt was settling itself on her shoulders, suddenly; she didn't want to admit what happened. It felt as though explaining this to her would let her down in some way.

Disgust's eyes began to sparkle and shine. "But…but that's not right. You weren't supposed to die. I mean…I really didn't think you were going to. I was _positive_ you weren't going to. You're Riley."

Riley rubbed her shoulder. She remembered having a very similar thought, once. As soon as the initial shock of the news from the doctors had worn off, a resolution made itself up in her head that _surely_ something would change – she would relapse, or something, and turn out to be just fine. The doctors at the hospital were idiots. They didn't know anything. _I'm not dying,_ she'd thought to herself once. _I'm not. They're wrong. I'll be fine. I'm Riley._

"Things were just getting dark because it was almost dawn. Right?" she turned to her fellow emotions briefly. "R-right, you guys?"

Sadness lowered her head. Fear shuffled uncomfortably on his feet. Joy smiled a sad, piteous smile that Disgust simply detested.

Disgust stomped her foot, giving everyone a bit of a start, and fired her gaze back to Riley, crossing her arms. "Isn't anybody going to explain what's going on?!"

Riley glanced up to Sadness, who blinked lethargically in return. She'd tried so hard.

Sighing, Riley brought it upon herself to carefully catch Disgust up to speed, having difficulty maintaining eye-contact with her as her shock and dismay only grew and grew. Eventually, Disgust thrust her palms up and interrupted her. "No. You know what? Stop. Just stop. None of this makes any sense. You're still here with us, aren't you? I'm pretty sure that's all that matters. You're not dead. You're just...here. Okay?"

Riley eased. "Um…yeah. Okay." If that was going to help Disgust feel better, she felt she had no other choice but to let it go.

"I get that we have a sister now. I'll kind of miss being an only child, but whatever. I'm sure I can make this work out, somehow." She glared pointedly at Fear and Joy. "Dumb and Dumber won't have any more opportunities to dine out with Boots now that _I'm_ around. I'll make sure that Taylor has the same impeccable taste as you do and that she only puts _select_ things in or around her body. Sound good?"

Riley helplessly smiled, passing sympathetic eyes over a pleasantly flustered Joy and a demoralized Fear. "Sounds perfect, I guess."

Disgust clapped her hands together. "Wonderful. Come on, Riley. Let's make sure Dad doesn't muck this up for Taylor too. After that, you and I can take a tour around this little tiny outhouse they dare to call _Headquarters_ and we'll spruce it up a little. Did I mention how good it is to actually get to talk to you? Gosh, you're just as pretty in person as I thought you'd be. You're welcome, by the way."

A shiver raked itself up Riley's spine Disgust wrapped her delicate, manicured fingers around hers. Riley never quite realized just how dissatisfying and dreary Headquarters actually was, even with the refreshing light as it poured in through the new windows. It was intolerably incomplete and in desperate need of a splash of colour. And who, exactly, let Fear dress the way he did? If he ever set one foot anywhere _near_ her high school grounds, he'd find himself tied to the tetherball pole faster than he could spell D-W-E-E-B.

 _What a nasty thought._ Riley supposed she could blame it on the Overflow.

Disgust clutched onto Riley throughout Taylor's breakfast. The two were like inseparable valentines. Disgust didn't want to let her go.

The endless Overflow of disgust made increasingly more difficult to look at Dad whenever Taylor did. A bitter taste landed on her tongue whenever she passed her eyes over his and his refusal to look at Taylor with the same love he had once radiated for Riley.

 _Come on, Dad._

 _Don't tell me you're only going to love her the way you loved me once you realize I'm here._

 _If that's the way it's going to be, I'll just have to find a way to make you see me._

 _…Hear that, little sis?_

She sighed. With purpose. And again, she glanced at the console.

 _I'll_ make _him see. Just you wait.  
_


	5. Wonderful Terrible Twos

_I'm so sorry, everyone :'c I've picked up a little extra work this weekend and life got really hectic (and kinda dumb, things broke!). Normally I am much faster at editing and getting chapters up but this week kept kicking me and my efforts back down. Hope the length of this chapter makes up for it!_

 _Thank you so much for all of the kind words and criticisms, and the favourites and follows. Readers new and old kept cheering me up throughout this rather rough week of mine :'3 You're all the best, and I really hope this story continues to please.  
_

 _~KQSimply_

* * *

As Headquarters continued to expand and the thrill of its fantasy moments wore into what she considered the norm, there was still one magical detail about this place that Riley would never tire of: Every night for a long, long time, she slept beneath the twinkling stars of Taylor's dreams. She loved them as much as she was growing to love Taylor.

The plotlines of her dreams skipped and danced all over the place. Most were very abstract – the emotions could read the truly outlandish ones like books, somehow, leaving Riley perplexed while the others prattled on like refined philosophers of the subject. It was amusing to listen to their discussions, at least, while she tuned out and let her own imagination run hand-in-hand with Taylor's.

When her baby sister dreamt, Riley felt very close to her. Sometimes, when she spoke out loud during a dream, she felt certain Taylor could hear her.

Riley turned to her right, watching as the day's memories tumbled Plinko-style from the shelves lining Taylor's Short-Term Memory. Fear took careful note of the behavior of things before concluding with a nod that all was well; he gazed with relief to a ramp that had appeared on the western half of Headquarters with Disgust's arrival; this ramp would carry his legs up to a new hallway lined with doors, where the emotions slept.

Everyone, even Joy and her endless flow of energy and spirit, seemed eager to get to bed these days. Taylor, two years old now, was filling her head with all sorts of wonderful new concepts like counting, singing, running, and even a vocabulary, loading each emotion with an armful of things to work with. They couldn't have been more thankful to have been blessed with a few bedrooms.

Riley, however, was still waiting for _her_ door to show up.

"I still can't believe you three let Riley sleep out here before I showed up." Disgust marched passed the exhausted crew in the opposite direction. She herself was headed to the console to fill in as the watchman for _Dream Duty_ , which had only recently become a thing. A single emotion would monitor Taylor's dreams and react to them accordingly, which came with the added bonus of freeing up one of the four available bedrooms for Riley to use these days. "Honestly, Joy, you were better off before you told me about that. Can't you be just a _little_ more responsible?"

Joy shrugged her shoulders. "Well, where else were we supposed to sleep? Besides, it was kind of fun. I'm sorry you missed it. It was like having a slumber party with Riley every single night!"

Indeed. For almost eleven months straight. Riley hid a tired smile from them, remembering some of the less-than-pleasant nights when Sadness would clamber on top of her, spreading her warmth and a fair amount of heartache through Riley's body. And Fear, who seemed to really love the company at night, startled her awake at least twice a week with his Overflow when his fingers would grip hers to comfort himself against his frequent bad dreams. But Joy had made the entire ordeal a warm, memorable one, because Joy was a cuddler, and more often than not, Riley found herself smiling off to sleep.

"Come on, Joy," Disgust went on to say. "As if I could ever be caught _dead_ with any part of my body on the floor. Except, you know, for my feet."

"Not to split hairs," said Fear, raising a finger as he turned, "but if you were dead, the floor would actually be a _very_ likely place for you to—"

 _"Sarcasm!"_

Fear yelped and his muscles locked up on him; Joy and Sadness had to push him up the remainder of the ramp.

Disgust rolled her eyes at the bunch as she dragged a chair behind her to the console. "So, Riley, my bedroom's free. Lucky you – I still think it's the best one out of all of them. But I'm sure you can't wait for your own room to show up, huh?"

"Yeah, actually, I'm pretty excited for it. I wonder when it's supposed to show up?"

"Soon, fingers crossed. I can't wait to decorate your bedroom too. I know _exactly_ how you would like it."

"I'll bet."

Riley had to smile again as Disgust made herself a little _too_ comfortable at the console, lowering a frilly sleep mask over her face. Her words to Joy from earlier ( _"Can't you be just a little more responsible?")_ echoed in Riley's head, tickling her. Disgust rarely paid any mind to the things Dream Productions threw at them, as she felt Taylor's need for feeling disgusted in her sleep did not surpass Disgust's need for a good night sleep. "Besides," she'd said once, "I'm positive you can't have a gross encounter in your sleep unless you drool."

As a matter of fact, Riley knew that Taylor had experienced countless dreams to which Disgust most definitely would have been opposed, like swimming in Jell-O, finding glitter in her nose, or sampling off of leafy plates as the guest of honour with Timon and Pumbaa.

 _What she doesn't about can't hurt her, I guess,_ Riley supposed. She lifted head a little. "Hey, Disgust...I have a question for you."

The other paused. "Hmm?"

"Would you mind if I stayed out here with you tonight? Maybe I can shadow you and learn how Dream Duty works. That way I can fill in if someone ever calls in sick or something." Disgust smirked at her, and Riley shrugged. "Or whatever. I don't know. Do emotions get sick?"

"Sick?" She scoffed, tossing her hair. "Not in the way you're probably thinking. The closest thing to a _physical_ sickness we've ever experienced was this one time when you were six...you had a god-awful fever, and **_ugh_** , it was like a hundred and _two_ in your Headquarters. It was hot and humid and nobody wanted to move. Fear was convinced we were all going to die and for the first time I almost had to agree with him." She flinched behind the pink mask of hers. Riley imagined that her eyes would be darting to and fro if she could see them. "Th-that was a long time ago, of course. You got over it in a week. Things are fine now. Right?"

"…Yeah."

"Yeah. And just so we're clear, that was also the _last_ time I ever thought we were going to die. And I only thought it for, like…a second or two. Okay?"

"…Sure, Disgust."

"Sure, as in, just, 'sure'? Or sure as in, 'Okay'? Which is it?"

"The, uh, the second one, I guess."

"Okay. Good.

Disgust was still firmly committed to the idea that despite the circumstances, despite the fact that Riley was co-existing with them in a completely new Headquarters belonging to an entirely different girl, Riley had never died. At first, it had been sort of charming. But now that it had been over a year, everyone else, Riley included, was beginning to worry about her. She was in denial, alright, and nobody, not even Sadness, seemed able to talk Disgust back into reality.

"Anyway, Riley, if you're serious, and you don't mind falling asleep on the couch that literally _everybody_ has been sitting on, be my guest."

Riley shook her head. "I really don't mind."

She didn't expect to actually learn anything during this impromptu session. Disgust fell asleep long before Taylor's illusory visions could begin, nestled in the warm makeshift bedding of her arms as she folded them over the edge of the console. Riley rose to drape a fluffy throw over Disgust's arms before walking close to lower edge of the window.

It felt as though she were actually standing in the field extending before her. Peace blanketed the entire plain. Riley could hear Taylor's heart as it beat precious life into her tiny veins.

She pecked her fingers and blew the kiss toward the screen, just as a coincidental gust carrying the seeds of a dandelion puff drifted into the skies of Taylor's dreams.

Riley exhaled and closed her eyes.

"…At least _someone_ knows I'm here. Isn't that right, Taylor?"

Echoes of Taylor's laughter played on the air.

"…Thanks, sis…I love you, too."

* * *

Taylor clapped her hands. _"Again!"_

 _"Again? I don't think you've grown anymore in the last two seconds, Taylor."_

 _"Again – please?"_

She was still struggling with her S's.

Mom laughed and lowered her hands onto Taylor's shoulders. _"Alright, if you insist, silly. Stand up straight. That's it. –No, no, not on your tiptoes. That's cheating. Put your heels right against the wall. Perfect. Hold still."_ Being careful of the two pigtails at the top of her head, Mom made a careful mark against the door frame in line with Taylor's scalp. " _There we go. Now, you see? What'd I tell you? You're still the exact same size. It takes time to grow up."_ She picked Taylor up, holding her close, and moved along the wall where a few dozen family photos had been hung. _"But you're getting bigger every day. Look how much you've grown."_

Taylor pointed at a photograph of an infant. _"What's that?"_

 _"That's you!"_

 _"Me?"_

 _"Mmhmm."_

 _"Nuh-uh."_

 _"Oh yes it is. That was from when you were extra little, before you had your glasses."_

Taylor smiled as Joy leaned her hands on the dials of the console as though ignorant of the significance of doing so. She and Taylor loved to gaze at pictures now that her vision was much clearer, and the two could demonstrate their new favourite ability to point, this way.

"Ugh, glasses," groaned Disgust. "They're so annoying."

"But at least you picked out a nice colour for us," Joy stressed, intercepting Disgust before she could prompt Taylor into fiddling with them. Taylor was always trying to shuffle them off of her face.

Taylor pointed again. _"What's that?"_

 _"That's Grandma and Grandpa. Remember when we talked to them on the computer? We're going to visit them in Minnesota when you're big enough. I just know you're going to love it out there."_

Now that was a premise Riley could look forward to with all of her heart. She grinned, letting her arms drop to her sides. "You bet she will, Mom." It felt strange to give in to jealousy; after all, Riley, technically, would be going too.

Taylor's attention diverted to a glittery frame filled with a faded photo of a bride and a groom. _"What's that?"_

 _"Alright, now you're just being silly. You know who those people are."_

Joy looked down to Sadness, who was glaring back at her with deep, questioning eyes, and flamboyantly shrugged. "Aw, gimmie a break. I just _love_ the sound of Mom's voice. I could listen to her talk and tell us stories all day."

Sadness considered this and gave a languid nod of her head. "Yeah...I guess you're right. I love it too."

 _"C'mon – who's this?"_

Mom laid her fingernail on the glass above the woman's head.

 _"That's mommy."_

 _"That's right. And who's this?"_

Taylor frowned.

 _"…That's Daddy,"_ said Mom insistently.

 _"No burr?"  
_  
 _"Nope, no beard. He shaved that day."_

Joy pulled her hands away from the console. "Blah. That's just _weird_."

"Downright freaky, if you ask me," Fear shuddered, having difficulty looking at the photo at all. "I keep forgetting that he can _do_ that."

Disgust crossed her arms, rolling her eyes away from the window. "He looks lost without it. Like some guy who showed up at the wrong place or something and wound up in one of the pictures by mistake."

Riley chuckled.

Taylor glanced into the living room, where Dad was seated on the couch, absorbed in a hockey game on the television. When Taylor returned her gaze to another photo mounted to the wall, Riley could still see his flickering reflection in the glass of the frame.

She sighed. Somehow, the emptiness she'd spotted in his eyes over a year ago had only worsened.

It dawned on her as she poured over his tired reflection that all eyes, especially those of Sadness, were suddenly facing her. Riley passed her own eyes back at them, her brow furrowing with concern. "...What's wrong?"

Slowly, the emotions looked back to the window, and Riley unfocused her eyes, allowing her to see the picture Taylor had been studying.

Slowly, Taylor rose her finger to point, her expression blank now that all hands had slipped away from the console entirely.

 _"What's that?"  
_  
Mom hesitated.

So did everyone around Riley. A solemn haze settled over the dwellers of Headquarters as they looked back out at the picture of a little girl in its marble frame.

 _"…That's Riley, sweetheart."_ After a pause, Mom tucked her cheek, warm and soft and sweet, against Taylor's. _"She was your big sister."_

Riley's heart sank.

She was so close. _So close._

And yet so far.

The emotions eyed Riley again, each one exhibiting their own unique variation of a 'troubled' expression. Inharmoniously, they shuffled apart from one another as Riley stepped forward, standing at the central zone of the console where the best view of the window could be obtained.

She was blinking up at a dozen innovatively-arranged photographs of her assorted stages of life. Taylor was looking at them clearly for the very first time.  
 _  
"Big sidder?"_

 _"Yes. That's right."_

Her mother drew a deep, trembling breath. _"Riley was our other baby."_

 _"Other baby?"_

 _"Mmhmm."_

 _"Let's go see."_

Riley and Sadness watched as Dad, reflected in the glass of Riley's photograph, stirred in his seat. They heard as he cleared his throat. The television shut off.

 _"Oh, Taylor…I wish we could."_ Mom's hand reached to touch her slender fingers against the corner of the frame, adjusting its position. _"Riley's in Heaven now."_

Powerless – _useless_ , she'd go as far to say, in the mood she was left in afterward– Riley could only watch as Dad rose from his chair and left the room without a word.

 _"Heaven?"_ Taylor parroted. _  
_

There were footsteps marching up the staircase.

 _"Yes, Heaven. Before you were born, your sister became an angel...and she's in a place where only the angels can stay, called Heaven. That's why we can't see her anymore. She left for Heaven."_

Taylor quietly returned her arm against her body, sucking on her fingers.

Upstairs, the door to one of the bedrooms came to a close.

A pang burned through the sum of Riley's soul. Her breath trembled as she lowered her hands down to the surface console, mutedly aware as the keen eyes of the emotions followed them there.

She closed her eyes.

"I…I never left, Mom. Honest. I'm...I-I'm right here..."

And she pressed down.

The dials beneath her palms offered little more than a suffocated _click_. Taylor blinked belatedly…a sheer coincidence. The console was dark and silent below her.

Riley's once-lenient hands began to curl into fists that shook upon the console's control panel. A desperation she had been treasuring deep within her core was beginning to billow, like acrid smoke, and it wanted out. It wanted to scream and shake the machine at her fingertips – the machine the emotions were dexterous masters of. They could make Taylor do and feel _anything_ with a gesture of their littlest finger.

Her sigh left her body as a grief-stricken shudder.

 _Why am I so useless?_

 _Why did I have to die?..._

She came to realize, tardily, that she was crying, and that the emotions were beginning to crowd close to her, their eyes deep and furrowed with concern. Fear had a hand on her shoulder, and Joy gently stroked down the length of her arm. Slowly, Riley bid her eyes downward and learned that Sadness had spanned the length of her lukewarm hand over the back hers.

Riley felt its weight as their combined hands continued to lean into a trigger on the console.

The entire contraption suddenly turned a vibrant ocean-blue, and a despondent, basso hum permeated the whole of the control center. The other emotions straightened and scuffled backward, tossing their eyes about as white lights blinked to life on the console, flowing gently around its edges like a river's current.

Taylor's eyes softened profoundly in response. She leaned her head to one side and frowned.

 _"…I want to see Riley."_

In that moment, the world and its clockwork movements came to a grinding halt.

Riley's gaze fell back to her hand for an instant as it lay beneath Sadness's. Their eyes fluttered at one another as they hovered over the convergence of their fingers, shocked, dumbstruck.

 _"I'm sorry, sweetheart. She's not here. Riley's in Heaven, now. Remember? She's an angel."_

 _"Angel?"_

 _"That's right."_

 _"Let's go see."_

 _"Taylor…we can't."_

 _"Tomorrow?"_

Mom turned away from the photographs on the wall and began to carry Taylor up the stairs. Her voice took on the same weariness it did whenever Taylor locked her in an endless loop of 'Whys' or 'Howcomes'. "... _No. I'm sorry, sweetie. You see …Heaven is pretty far away from here. It could take us one hundred years to get there. Maybe even more. And even if we managed to get there…they only let the angels in."_

 _"No Heaven?"_

 _"No, honey. It's not time for either of us to go to Heaven yet."_

Taylor was quiet, her eyes dancing back and forth. Trying to understand.

 _"I'll tell you more about it when you're older. Okay?"_

 _"Okay. Then let's go see. I want to see Riley." _

Mom paused at the top of the stairs, silent. Her honey-brown eyes were low. Pensive.

Meanwhile, inside, Joy, Fear and Disgust crept in close to the pair whose hands rested so firmly on the console.

Riley turned first to Joy, hoping to find an answer in the smile that gleamed back at her.

Joy countered with a question before Riley could muster an ounce of strength for her tongue. "Riley – how – are you _doing_ that?"

"I don't know." Riley's eyes were enormous, even as she blinked lingering tears away. "I…I don't _know_."

"Whatever you're doing," said Disgust, unable to peel her gaze from the sudden beauty of the console, "it's certainly got Taylor's attention…and I can't blame her. Look at this thing! I've never seen it do _this_ before."

"Is she responding to Sadness? Or to _you,_ Riley _?_ I-I can't tell!" Fear stooped so close to their fingers that Riley could feel his anxious breath puffing against them as he tried to discern who had actually activated the trigger.

Sadness, her mouth agape and her eyes at once reflective and sharp, removed her hand from Riley's, and the console's brilliant display faded away in a heartbeat, leaving the console in its neutral position. No lights. No colour. White, calm, and ever-so-faintly translucent.

Joy shattered the stunned stillness that had befallen the group with a sudden burst of excitement and activity on her part. "Here, here–" she cried as she used her body to shovel the other emotions out of the way– "let me try!"

 _"…I'll tell you what, cutiepie."_ Mom resumed the brief trek to Taylor's bedroom. A low-key smile painted her lips. _"How about we get you in your PJs, and when you're ready for bed, I'll tell you all about Riley. We may not be able to see her, but she left lots and lots of stories behind when she left for Heaven. Would you like that, Taylor?"_

Joy draped her hands across Riley's, just as Sadness had done, and leaned her weight onto it in such a way that Riley's hand sank into a dial on the control panel beneath. The console activated once again, shining so bright this time that no one could bear to look at it directly; the emotions winced through its radiance as a pleasant chime rang through the air, accompanied by the faint, whispering echoes of a very familiar laughter.

Everyone helplessly gaped at Riley, their mouths curling into _wonderful_ grins.

Her breath was caught somewhere between the back of her throat and her tremendous, augmented smile that beamed above the radiance flowing from the console.

And in response, Taylor squealed and kicked her feet in an effort to reach the floor again. " _Yes, yes! Let's go see Riley!_ " She ran ahead of her mother, disappearing into the shadowy depths of her bedroom. Her co-ordination and depth perception being rather _sub-par_ , she wound up tripping and fell down on the floor with a room-rattling _ker-thump_ (to Fear's cringing dismay), but this did precious little to slow her down – Taylor was laughing again by the time she rediscovered her feet.

"Okay, okay, t _ake it easy, Taylor. Hold still, let me get your top off."_ Her laughter was so contagious that Mom couldn't help but laugh herself. _"Goodness! What's gotten into you?"_

It wasn't what had gotten _in_ …it was what had gotten _out_.

Riley and Joy looked up; their eyes twinkled in time with one another. Sadness, Fear, Disgust – they were beaming at her too, crowding close to her and the console. Disgust's eyes were bright and dazzling; Fear's grin was impossibly hopeful; Sadness's sweet little smile indicated that she alone knew just how much this moment meant to Riley.

It was faint and subtle, like a single thistle-down seed cast to the wind. But it _was_ a start. Riley could just feel that this, after two years of waiting for the opportunity to knock, was only the beginning.

Everyone in the room could feel it. This, surely, was the uncertain whisper that would clear its throat someday and sing loud and clear for the entire world to chant along with.

Sadness took Riley's free hand from below, her Overflow enticing the last of Riley's tears to trickle across her indomitable smile.

* * *

 _"When Riley was getting ready for to leave for Heaven, I made her this scrapbook so that she could take it with her, to remember what living on Earth had been like."_

Though the book was pristine and professional at first glance with its laminated pages and neatly coiled spine, the features stowed away within it were old, faded, and classical. Taylor's eyes sparkled and danced over the dozens of photos of Riley it was filled with, and she listened intently to the stories that each one was accompanied by.

Riley, at the center of the console, and the Emotions, gathered tight around her sides, eyed the window, dumbstruck, adrift in a most surreal nostalgia they'd never dreamt could exist. How strange it was to behold a memoir of themselves. Though Riley could only faintly recall seeing some of the photos, the emotions had lived out each moment in sentient real-time and could point and add their own sentiments from the times that they remembered.

Mom kissed Taylor loudly on the cheek before turning yet another page. Immediately, Taylor's eyes lit up and she squeaked. These pages were filled with juvenile drawings done in bright, eye-assaulting colours.

Mom kept talking, but no one in Headquarters could hear her anymore – it had suddenly become rather noisy in Taylor's head. The emotions, overtly riveted by the sight of Riley's childhood drawings, swarmed themselves tightly against the console, their pupils dilating into enormous wells of sheer pleasure.

"Oooh!" Joy's cheeks flushed. "Holy _doodles!"_

"Look at those pretty colours!" Fear inched a hand out toward the Monitor.

"Oh, I like these! Riley, you were such an _artist_ when you were Taylor's age! _"_ Disgust's eyes sparkled; Riley smiled clumsily, realizing that the other was tearing up.

Sadness, who had yet to join in all of the excitement, to no one's surprise, was staring dead ahead, dumbfounded, her mouth agape.

Riley's brow furrowed as she pulled away from the others to address her. Perhaps all of the nostalgia was getting to be too much. She knelt and lay a hand on Sadness's shoulder, her voice firm with trepidation. "Sadness? You okay? What's the matter?"

Sadness rose her finger to gesture to the window. Her tongue was stiff and her words, few as they were, came out slow. "Riley… _Look."_

She turned to follow Sadness's finger. Everyone, in fact, turned. And the whole of the group gasped.

Joy snatched Riley's hand into hers, plunging it down to the console. In response, Taylor's eyes flashed and she interrupted her mother's story to point at one of Riley's scribbly drawings.

 _"What's that?"_

Mom looked down to the page and laughed through her nose. "Oh…that's a family picture Riley drew for us when she was very little," she said. "That's Daddy – see his moustache? And that's Mommy." Actually, the two were a little difficult to distinguish. Only a mother as keen as Riley's and Taylor's could have spotted the difference. She moved her finger over the shortest member of the group. "And that's R—"

Taylor pointed again, demandingly. _"What's that?"_

Mom smiled a wry, though loving smile. _"Hmm? Oh, well…That was Bing Bong. He wound up in a lot of the family portraits Riley made."_

 _"Bing Bong?"_

 _"He was Riley's imaginary friend. She used to sing about him all the time."_

It was love at first sight.

Taylor laughed and chanted the name over and over again. What a jolly sound it made as it bounced off her tongue! Goodness only knew what it was that had won her over so quickly; it could have been his pink, fluffy body, his long trunk arching over his head, or his big, bushy tail that reminded her so much of the one Boots trailed behind her all day (and was so tempting to pull).

Inside, Riley flinched as bits and pieces of very faded memories fluttered up to her like dizzy moths at a lantern. The corner of her mouth pulled into a half-smirk of budding awareness. "Wow…Oh my gosh. I completely forgot about him."

The incredible radiance of Joy's smile nearly outdid the light flooding from the console. "You remember him now, Riley? You do? You _really_ do?"

Riley gave a belated, somewhat dishonest nod of her head as she tried _desperately_ to relive a single memory involving him from beginning to end, her efforts in vain. It was all so very long ago. But she could be sure that at one point or another, her little invisible friend had brought her the very same smile Taylor exhibited that magical evening.

Riley and Joy removed their hands from the console as Mom brought the scrapbook to a close. They weren't halfway finished leafing through its laminated pages, but Mom, following Taylor's suggestion to keep reading, insisted it was time for her to settle down for bed. The console was still vibrant and almost painfully bright – Taylor argued that she wasn't sleepy, in spite of her relentless yawns as her mother stroked her hair and gently asserted that this simply wasn't true.

Fear, Joy and Disgust were still reeling with excitement as they worked to shut Headquarters down, spoon-feeding detail after detail to Riley until her head felt as though it would burst. Story after story came tumbling in, and little by little, the fog cleared, and memories became plainer to see.

She _remembered._

She locked eyes with Sadness, who padded up to her, hands timidly tucked together, and gave Riley a tiny grin. "…You know what?" she whispered in such a gentle, moving sort of way that the other emotions paused what they were doing and turned to pay attention, too.

Riley grinned down at her. "What?"

"At first," Sadness went on to say, after pausing to sort her words, "when I saw your old drawing of Bing Bong through Taylor's eyes, it made me feel a little sad. His last wish was to be remembered by you; I never would have guessed it would happen after you passed away. Now it's too late, and he can't ever play with you again, like he wanted to."

The whirlwind of bliss everyone had been tickled by suddenly stopped, holding its breath, deeply offended.

Joy's shoulders began to droop. "…Oh, Sadness…" _Was that really necessary?_ she seemed to wish to add.

"…Ouch…what goes up must come down, I suppose," sighed Fear, whose antenna unfurled and fell limp down his back, as though to illustrate this point of his.

"Nice one, Sadness. The mood didn't stand a chance against you." Disgust turned away from her. "And when are you people going to drop the act? Riley's _right here."_

Riley exhaled, turning back to Sadness, who seemed to have ignored her colleague's moans. There was still a shy, distinctive smile playing on her lips.

"It was really something when you interacted with Taylor today…and it became something even better when you gave Taylor something that had once been so special to you."

These arresting words caused Riley's brow to twitch.

Sadness merely turned to the window again, prompting Riley, Joy, Fear and Disgust to do the same.

It might have been a trick of the night-light's paltry afterglow. Or perhaps Dream Productions was trying to sneak previews of the night's dream over the monitor's display, as Taylor's eyes drew to a close for the night.

Or…perhaps Riley and the emotions truly _had_ seen the faint, curious grin of a jovial creature at the bottom of Taylor's bed who seemed so eager to play again.

* * *

That night, Riley insisted that the emotions go to bed while she filled the role of the watchman on Dream Duty, much to the shock of the others.

Fear was noisily opposed to the idea. "Gee, I don't know about this. What if Taylor has a nightmare? Would you know what to do in order to wake her up? W-we could wind up trapped in a nightmare forever! Is that possible?"

But in the end, he was outvoted, particularly once Riley smirked and claimed that Disgust had given her "lots of pointers" over the course of the last few weeks. "Isn't that right, Disgust?"

"…Oh…uh…y-yeah…absolutely, Riley."

Disgust forced a smile out of herself and followed Fear up to the bedroom. He merrily announced to everyone that he felt much better leaving Riley at the helm for Dream Duty, now that he knew she'd been properly educated by _a true expert._

The announcement made Disgust look very uncomfortable.

Sadness and Joy weren't nearly as gullible as Fear was. But they smiled to Riley nevertheless, waving goodnight as they brought the bedroom door to a quiet close. "Just call if you need us, Riley."

"I will. Promise. Goodnight everybody."

"Goodnight, Riley."

"Sleep tight."

"Don't let the bedbugs bite. A-and try not to bite them back if you can help it. I read somewhere that the average person swallows something like eight to ten bugs a–"

"UGH! What's the matter with you?! Get to bed!"

Riley laughed, turning back to the window. She rubbed her hands together.

All through the night between Taylor's fluctuating dreams, Riley would tap away at different keys on the console to try and prompt her little sister awake again. Surely, the smiling face that had faded into the shadow of sleep would be waiting for her whenever she woke. Riley wanted nothing more than for Taylor to meet her old friend, certain that the two would get along famously.

As it turned out, running the console was not as simple without help from the emotions. Riley did discover a wheel that would provoke Taylor to stir in her sleep. And she found a knob that, once turned, caused Taylor to briefly open her eyes, but her dreams continued to override the window. Everything became strange and distorted.

"Come on, Taylor. You just _have_ to wake up. There's someone special waiting for you out there. I really want you to meet him."

As she spoke, Taylor gave a promising moan. Riley snatched her hands away from the keyboard at once, pinning them flat against her chest. A deep rumbling that shook the air in the distance beyond Riley's back followed her sister's profound sigh; grumbling, Taylor rolled over in bed and the dream assumed its original display of abstract events.

Riley wrinkled her brow. The sound behind her was growing. A warmth was creeping into the air around her shoulder blades, and it could not be said that this warmth was even a tiny bit pleasant.

She spun around, met with the alarming sight of billowing, fiery stormclouds as they crowded together on the air, fusing themselves into a new fragment of emotion. Her face lit up as she tiptoed closer to the spectacle, admiring as these smoldering clouds toughened into a single solid fist before they dispersed, leaving a stout, burning-red individual in their wake. His brow made up the whole of his essence, easily, and it was only after the burning eyes below it gave a very brief sweep of Taylor's Headquarters that this brow caved downward into an intimidating scowl.

He was very quick to find Riley, who straightened up the moment his scorching-red eyes fell upon her.

It was too menacing to allow the silence to persist for very long. The longer they stared, the deeper his frown grew, until Riley could see that he was clenching his teeth and his fists simultaneously.

"…You must be Anger," Riley uttered, her eyes flicking briefly to the door to the emotions' sleeping quarters. It was apparent it was not about to open.

He flashed her a very sudden smile that was altogether _too_ charming to have been genuine. "And you must be Riley," he crooned, flourishing a massive hand in the air before he began to stomp toward her. That painfully synthetic smile of his was quickly starting to fade. "And _this_ must be a chair," he announced as he kicked it out of his way, "and _this_ must be the **_console_** ," and as he spat the word 'console' through his teeth, he slammed his fist against its surface, which caused Taylor to groan again and bury her head beneath the pillow, "and THIS," he boomed, thrusting his palm out toward the window, "is a Dream Productions feature playing the _wrong kind of dreams_ for the _freaking wrong kid!"_

Riley paced backwards from him. A very unpleasant heat was curling around her body as he drew closer to her. Regardless of this, she managed a sardonic smile and straightened, inclining her head to one side. "Yep. I thought as much. The others really weren't kidding about _you."_

"The others, huh? So they're in on this too? Those idiots. I should've known."

The air around his head was beginning to shimmer. Riley chose to disregard this as she landed her hands upon her hips in disapproval. "...Huh. Kinda not very nice of you to talk about your friends that way, after all of the good things they've told me about you."

Anger grunted, spinning on his heel to face her again.

Riley went on, tapping her foot as though scolding a toddler. She was shamelessly baiting him, having heard plenty of rather amusing stories about his insufferable temper. "Yeah, they were getting pretty worried, you know. And I was so sure this reunion was going to be a happy one, too…"

"Happy? _Happy?_ Are you being serious right now, or did kicking the bucket really mess with your head that badly?"

At this, Riley flinched, and she drew her arms up against her chest, mimicking one of Fear's famous postures. Then, she blinked and her back straightened. "…Oh. I get it." She narrowed her eyes at him. "So, dying was my fault, somehow. You're mad at _me_ for something I had no control over."  
 _  
"You?!_ Oh brother. That's rich. Real rich. The hereafter sure isn't treating your brain very well, is it, Riles? Makes perfect sense, I suppose, given the fact that I'm clearly not in there anymore."

Riley felt as her cheeks began to flush. They were both rather talented at pushing one another's buttons. Perhaps Anger's Overflow could be experienced by merely standing too close to him.

"No," he snapped, stomping toward her, "I'm not mad at _you."_

Riley threw her arms out, matching his approach with a few steps of her own. "Then what's your _deal?"_

"You wanna know?!"

"I do!"

Their voices were beginning to bounce off of the walls in Headquarters. Riley was dimly aware that the door above them had creaked open, but she was so engrossed in the 'discussion' that she couldn't so much as lift her eyes in its direction. "I don't believe it!" Fear's stage-whisper voice exclaimed. "It's Anger!"

Anger wasn't about to move from his spot in the 'conversation' either. His eyes burnt smoldering holes into Riley's. "Then allow me to start from the top of the trash pile and work my way down!" Anger began to count off on his thick fingers. "Number one: Those stupid, idiotic, malfunctioning doctors! They really thought they knew everything, didn't they? All those blood tests, those empty promises, the way they told us we had less than a year to live without a hitch…to hell with all of 'em! How _dare_ they!"

Riley began to cringe. She remembered harbouring those thoughts somewhere at the back of her head. The pressure of pushing this aside seemed to spread down to her chest. Whenever she saw someone dressed in their cheery scrubs, she felt her own blood start to boil. She came so close to hitting an innocent nurse once that she could still feel the ache of restraining her own arm muscle.

"Number two," Anger barked, stepping even closer to Riley, "your Headquarters crew! Are you aware of the fact that they just _let_ you die? Well? Are you?"

This left Riley stammering for a clever comeback. She knew that they'd had no choice. It had never been up to her own _emotions_ to determine whether she survived her illness or not. How could he possibly blame _them?_

"If those other saps had just let me take over, I could have done something. I could have told all of the doctors and nurses exactly where to shove it! I would've hit that nurse so hard…"

"What difference would that have made? I was going to die whether I attacked anybody or not. Being angry about it wasn't going to _change_ anything."

The heat had risen to an unbearable height, and it seemed to keep climbing. Riley blinked sweat out of her eyes.

"Oh _jeeze_ —" Fear was starting to panic behind her. She could hear him pacing at the top of the landing.

Anger went on as though Riley had never spoken. Her eyes snapped open as she noticed that the fierce-red of his particles were beginning to sizzle and crackle like embers in a mulch fire. "And number three: _Mom and Dad_. Need I say more?!"

 _"What?"_

"How could they let you die? How _could_ they? After all we'd been through – after all of the things we used to do together – after telling us _over_ and _over_ again that everything would be okay – welp – they were _wrong._ Mom and Dad were _WRONG!"_

At first, the words that flew from his mouth were painfully devastating. A long time ago, she had thought them to be true. She remembered turning away from her mother and father one evening as they solemnly entered her room…she remembered telling them to go away, to leave her alone.

"They were supposed to know everything! They were supposed to take care of us! That's what Moms and Dads are supposed to do! And they messed up, and they let you _die,_ Riley. Don't you get it?!"

But when they stood, after a long pause, Riley called after their backs and begged them to come return to her.

 _"I'm sorry,"_ she had wept. _"I'm sorry. Please don't go. I didn't mean it. Please come back. Don't leave. Please?"_

It wasn't hatred that had lashed out at her parents that night. It had been confusion. Confusion, agony, and just a pinch of hysteria. And combined, it all sounded an awful lot like Anger.

"…Anger?" Riley stepped closer to him so that the two were practically toe-to-toe, and his nigh-intolerable heat stung the flesh of her face. "…Are you _crying?"_

Anger, taken aback, recoiled. His eyes widened, his feverish glower dispersed.

Briefly.

Little by little, quivering rage returned to his fists and his shoulders, forcing his teeth together, dragging a furious growl up from his core. His head, to her disbelief, was beginning to ignite. A twisted curiosity impelled her to watch as the embers above his brow sparked to life –

Her heart was suddenly thundering away in her chest and she actually shrieked – Fear had snatched her hand from behind and yanked her to safety behind the couch.

Anger planted his feet and roared; the intensity of his wrath surfaced at long last as an inferno exploded from the top of his skull. The flames raged against the air around him for an instant that felt a bit more like an eternity.

The bedroom door opened again, and this time Riley made sure to look up. Joy, Disgust and Sadness, respectively, were scrambling down the ramp to confront the scene. By the time they'd reached Anger's position, however, the intensity of his flames was already beginning to diminish.

Exhaustion extinguished the impetuous firestorm. Having fatigued his lungs and the rest of his body, Anger's voice gave out and he fell face-first onto the floor, smoldering in silence.

Riley exchanged a brief glance with Fear, who gulped as he finally let her go, allowing the two of them to straighten from the sofa they'd taken refuge behind. He, joined by the concerned faces of Joy, Sadness and Disgust, watched as Riley calmly rose and approached Anger's fallen figure, waving residual vapors away as she knelt down next to him, listening to his steady breaths. In…and out.

Riley sat cross-legged beside him and lay a ginger hand on his back. It was very warm, like something fresh out of the oven.

After a long pause, Riley smiled.

"…Feel better?" she whispered.

Anger's body expanded as he drew a deep, _deep_ breath.

"...Yes," he moaned through the exhale that eventually followed.


	6. Belonging and Believing

_Very sorry again for delays :c But very thankful for all of the new favs and follows and the extremely kind reviews, thank you all so much c': And if you're reading this, thank you for following the story; I hope it continues to please! I've been having difficulty with the doc manager the last few days, so hopefully nothing is overly weird in the formatting of this update. haha :c  
_  
 _~KQSimply_

* * *

"...So. Taylor, you say."

"Yep."

Anger was glaring up at the dusky window with overcast, ominous eyes. He was drumming his fingers along the edge of the console. Riley and the others were having difficulty determining whether or not he actually approved of the situation.

"…Our sister?"

Riley shook her head. " _My_ sister."

Anger's arm slid away from the console. He turned, passing his gaze along to the other emotions, one by one. They offered him nods of enthusiasm and assurance. Joy was smiling away, which was nothing unusual, though it seemed a smidgeon brighter that day, as though she'd been reserving its cheer especially for Anger; Sadness simply exuded her distinctive, patient wisdom; Fear attempted to give him a confident thumbs-up (he thwarted his act when he startled at the sound of footsteps outside of Taylor's room).

Disgust, of course, didn't care for Riley's assertion that Taylor was their _girl_ and not their _sister_ …she was content to blink listlessly before redirecting her eyes to her nails instead of engaging with him like the others did. Typical Disgust, Anger seemed to think, as he gave a loud eye-roll at her and her ignorance. Riley, however, could tell from the way that Disgust kept flickering her gaze back and forth between the ground and Anger, when he wasn't looking, that she was suppressing her own excitement to see him again.

Anger finally deflated, closing his eyes as he expelled a long-suffering breath. For a while he was still and pensive – Fear, Sadness and Joy, in contrast, held their breaths altogether and crowded close to one another, rigid with apprehension for Anger's official response.

Gradually, he brought his eyes back up to Riley's. They seemed so rational and clever now that he had appropriated an instance of calm upon himself. It made him seem like a different emotion altogether, like when Sadness smirked, or when Fear was at ease. Riley knew she could relax. "…That's…gonna take some getting used-to, you know," he muttered. "Because when you've spent nearly fourteen years working inside a girl's head, suddenly, she's really the only thing you'll ever understand. Right guys? Somebody back me up, here."

Joy's gaze collapsed; she played furiously her fingers. "…Well…I guess it's…I mean…"  
And Fear shrunk, his eyes ricocheting between Anger, Riley and Joy. "…Th-that's a fair observation, Anger, but, uh…"  
Sadness glanced first to Anger, and then to Riley, with reflective eyes. She didn't – perhaps she couldn't – say anything.

Disgust scoffed at the other three and their passivity. "Yeah, Anger. We know Riley. We know Riley better than any _body_ and any _thing_."

"There. You see?" Anger held out his palms to Riley, as though requesting some material variety of her understanding. "The truth is, kid…it was an _honour_ to work with you back at the Riley Andersen HQ. Oh sure, we had our ups and downs, like the time we almost got lost on that hiking trip, or the catastrophic move from Minnesota – and Riley, you sure made some decisions that didn't make a whole lotta sense to me. Letting Joy take over sometimes when you knew darned well _I_ should've been driving, or listening to Sadness instead of me that one time Mom and Dad forgot to pick us up after hockey practice …? _Yeesh_. But you know what? I can still say that I had the time of my life while I was there. Even when things got _really_ bad…I could always look back, remember the things that you and I overcame, and I'd know it'd be worth it in the end."

He glimpsed the window's edge as Taylor began to stir in search of a thumb to suck.

"…Maybe you're just not aware of the magnitude of the thing you're asking me to do. I'll buy that. If that's the case, then let flip it around and simplify it a tad: After all of _that_ , after all we've been through and all we've managed to do…you want me to toss that over my shoulder and start fresh with this Taylor kid. That's a lot to ask, Riley. That's an awful lot."

Riley hummed, raising a ginger finger to pinch her bottom lip as she took his words into consideration. She began to pace, sensing as all eyes followed her slow, steady path. As strange a concept as it was, Riley felt she could understand what he was getting at. It was rather flattering, actually, to learn that these eclectic fragments of her former self were so attached to her. But as flattering as it was, with the arrival of Anger and his surprisingly moving sentiments, it was all so terribly intimidating, suddenly. It left her with the responsibility of having to redirect their affection. And she was beginning to worry that even after two years, she wasn't doing as good of a job as she'd first assumed.

Joy had been very eager to step into her role of helping Taylor smile. But then, Riley supposed that if she had been blessed with a magic sunshiny touch that could make anybody smile at its command, she'd want to abuse it too. It was hard to tell, all of a sudden, if Joy was actually invested in Taylor, or if she was instead simply too infatuated by the idea of passing on her ability to someone to resist doing so.

And Fear. As Riley glanced at him and noted the way he regarded Anger with such rigid respect, she began to wonder if he was any more devoted to Taylor than Joy was. Fear had been very easy to persuade into his role…perhaps _too_ easy. It was possible that Fear was the type of individual who did what he was told, and blindly submitted the strongest personality in the room. That, of course, was Anger right now. No contest.

Disgust was doing all of her work to please Riley. Not Taylor. And it meant that Taylor thus far liked and disliked things from the very same list that had been written for two year-old Riley. This had seemed like a good idea at first – it only made sense to keep Taylor as far away from broccoli, beach sand and the colour orange as much as possible. But something about it seemed unfair. Riley couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Sadness…Sadness seemed to be the only one who accepted Taylor for who she was. Sadness was there for Taylor when life called upon her warm, tiny tears, and she was there when Taylor's juvenile heart simply needed to feel heavy. She listened to Taylor's every poorly pronounced word and felt Taylor's every desperate little need.

So, when Riley looked to Sadness, whose mild eyes seemed to nod, confidence flickered to life inside of her. If one emotion could fully devote themselves to her sister, all of them could. Anger would be no exception. They would just need a little prodding.

Riley turned and settled her hand upon Anger's shoulder. He wavered beneath her palm at first, his eyes flicking briefly at her fingers as they fell upon him, but he was quick to unwind. The look he fired at the others, however, seemed to denote that if they so much as attempted what Riley had done, they'd have another thing coming.

"I'm glad you told me that, Anger," said Riley. "This is all pretty new to me, still. And, no offence, everyone, but I still think this whole thing is weird. Like, maybe the weirdest thing ever."

They shrugged. "None taken," most said, in jumbled unison.

"But I never really thought about how weird this would be for all of you, too. Especially you, Anger. I didn't think you'd have such, ah….strong opinions about me." He grumbled beneath her fleeting smirk. "…So…as tough as it might be at first, I want you to try not to think of the years you spent with me as a waste. They weren't a waste. At all. They were…a test-drive. Boot-camp. You know? For the real deal. For _this."_

Anger raised a brow at her.

"C'mon. Taylor's my little sister! I want the very best for her. She deserves it. That's where you're going to come in." She straightened, perching her hands on her hips. "The others told me that your job up here would be to help Taylor assert herself. That's what you did for me back in the day, right?"

"Absolutely."

"Great. That's _exactly_ what I want you to do for Taylor. Maybe even kick it up a notch." Riley smirked. "I gotta confess: I kinda _loved_ that boiling feeling of getting all worked up sometimes. That _was_ you, wasn't it?"

Anger's eyes lit up. A yearning grin was starting to cross his face "You kidding? Who else would it've been? Sure as heck wasn't Gonzo over there."

Fear coughed, insulted.

"And hey, I loved it too. Nothing felt better than stepping up to the wheel during a class debate. Man, we'd be on fire up there – the other kids would be shaking in their Nike's. And how about hockey? Those San Fran-sissies were terrified to face off against you and I. We were a firestorm! Coulda melted the ice out there, I'll bet."

Riley laughed out loud. The others from behind Anger – Fear, Joy, even Disgust, and surprisingly enough, Sadness, were starting to laugh along with her. "Right!"

"See, it's not always about making your kid outraged and aggressive, you know…it's also about gumption." Anger clapped the backs of his knuckles into the opposite palm. "Confidence. Passion. Guts. A powerful thirst for justice and success Takes a variety of the things I bring to the table to manufacture a kid as awesome as Riley Andersen."

He was unaware that Joy, thespian that she was, was lip-syncing and mimicking his hand gestures behind his back. Apparently this wasn't the first time he'd given this speech. Riley worked hard to stifle a laugh behind her sinuses.

Mercifully, Anger didn't seem to take any notice of it. "So. You, uh…you _really_ want me lend all of that to Taylor, do you?"

"Yep. I sure do." She bobbed her head once. Indisputably. And then she winked an eye. "As long as you think you can handle her, that is."

"Ha! Taylor's not going to know what came over her. She'll move entire mountains now that I'm around! Let me show you what I'm capable of. I'm ready."

A swift, confident exhale left Riley's nose as she and Anger swapped zealous grins.

Then, she looked up to the others, and her smile fell slightly. The other four emotions shuffled in awkward unison beneath the shadow her sudden gravity as it was cast over them. "…What about the rest of you?" At this, the emotions blinked, first at Riley, and then at each other, until her voice commanded their attention again. "…You're all going to work hard for Taylor too…right? As hard as you did for me?"

"Of course, Riley," Joy answered, her voice treading carefully on its tiptoes before her. "Of course we will. Why wouldn't we? Taylor's your sister. She deserves the best."

Fear nodded insistently. "A-absolutely. The _very_ best."

Disgust would not look up from the floor.

Sadness, whom Riley had not meant to direct this question to, slowly began to lift her gaze up from her hands as she fiddled with them. Her eyes were visibly pained. "…Why do you ask, Riley?"

Riley's demeanor softened. Her own eyes danced off into space as she struggled to draft up the right words. Whether they were right or not as they eventually tumbled from her tongue, she wasn't sure. "…I just want to be certain that she's going to be in good hands." The four emotions straightened, at this, their jaws parting as they began to understand, one by one, what Riley was implying. "…I need to know that you guys are going to be there for her. I need to know that you all...you know...care."

Dad gave Riley enough doubts. She couldn't bear the thoughts of Taylor's own emotions giving her the cold shoulder too.

Suddenly, Joy, Fear, Sadness, and even Disgust approached Riley all at once, their pleas showering her with guilt.

"Oh, Riley," cried Joy, who gathered Riley's hand into both of her own. Hope welled up inside of her. "We do care about Taylor. We do. We really do. I think she's wonderful. She's so much like you. She loves to smile. She loves when I'm there. You were a lot like that. I'll always be there for her, just like I was for you. Honest."

Disgust could rambunctiously concur. "Seriously, Riley. Who put the idea in your head that we didn't care about Taylor? Of course we do. We care about her as much as you do."

Sadness hugged Riley's arm. Her Overflow, thankfully, seemed to get lost in the fibers of her sleeve. "Don't be upset Riley. Please? We _love_ Taylor."

Fear drew himself closer to Riley, clenching his hands in front of his chest. "Yes, yes, of _course_ we love Taylor." Though Riley had thought it to be impossible, his eyes increased in size, and she pitied them more than ever before. "We just – you know – we still love _you_ , too."

Fear's words hung in the air as the rising momentum of the situation came to an abrupt halt. Riley stared at him, frozen, despite her being well aware of the fact that she was causing him unintentional discomfort. The tender smile she attempted came out wrong – instead it was more like a scoff. At herself. "…I…I guess I let myself forget that this must be... _hard_ on you guys, too. As hard as it is...weird." Everyone, ultimately, nodded at her. An enfeebled chuckle left Riley's chest. "…Now I feel like a jerk."

"Sorry. My bad." Fear cringed. "Me too, now, if that helps."

"It does," said Anger, just to be a little spiteful. He flicked his gaze back at Riley. "C'mon. This is _us_ we're talking about. We get you. You don't have to feel like a jerk."

"Obviously not." Disgust's eyes had softened by an aberrant degree. "Not around us."

Sadness nodded. "Yeah. We understand."

And Joy illuminated the room with her smile. "…We're going to make sure that Taylor's every need for us is met. We'll work just as hard as we did for you. Promise. Cross my heart—" she did so "—and hope to fly—" and she folded her thumbs together, fanning her fingers to pantomime a bird in flight. "Especially if that's what's going to make you happy, Riley. I'll do anything for Taylor, and anything for you."

Joy's words were so comforting. They never failed her. Ever. Not even _before_. "…Thank you, everyone."

And with that, the agonizing weight that once plagued her shoulders, stood up, dusted itself off, and left Riley without so much as excusing itself. She could close her eyes and dismiss a deep, satisfied sigh at long last, and a smile of sincerity blossomed on her face.

Everything was going to be okay.

It was Fear who finally spoke up, punching the air with a measly fist as he did so. "Well, I, for one, think a group hug is in order, here."

Joy liberated a squeal she'd been trying to contain since Anger's arrival, and she wasted no time in gathering Sadness and Fear beneath one arm, and Anger and Disgust beneath the other, much to the tacit protests of the latter two. Riley couldn't help but laugh. "Aww, I love you guys! I do!" Her eyes flickered up to Riley, whom she beckoned with her index finger. "Get in here, you."

Riley managed a single uneasy step toward the group before someone snatched her and pulled her into their cornucopia of colour and warmth.

Her thoughts were suddenly a whirlwind of emotional pandemonium.

 _Wow! Hugs! I missed hugs—_

 _UGH, someone's stepping on my—_

 _Holy claustrophobic! Too tight! I need to breathe—_

 _Really really hope emotions don't have germs—_

 _This is too much! My heart can't take this! I-I'm gonna cry—_

And then they all stood back, gushing at her, laughing (or else trying to stifle it) and agreeing that they'd been putting this embrace off for entirely too long. Riley's mind was still tingling; her whole body felt alive again, awake, present. She felt like the sun - brilliant, mighty, daring and unstoppable. And she had these five funny faces in front of her to thank for it.

It was simply undreamed-of. It was incredibly weird.

And she decided, then and there, that it was _wonderful_.

* * *

A day or two before Anger's arrival, Riley had happened upon, of all things, a fire extinguisher. She found it hanging up against a wall one day and was surprised to find that none of the emotions paid any special attention to it. Curiosity may have been a cold-blooded killer, but Riley was no cat – she had to know. What purpose was a _fire extinguisher_ going to serve inside of Taylor's head?

"Hey, it never hurts to be prepared," said Joy, when asked. Riley supposed that was true, but it hadn't answered her question.

"Ugh, I know, the red totally clashes with this place. Just try to ignore it," said Disgust. Not that this helped either.

"That's a fire extinguisher. It extinguishes fires," said Sadness, taking her realistic approach to things just a _tad_ too far, perhaps.

"Oh…that'll come in handy soon enough, I'm sure," said Fear, who cringed, eyes darting back and forth in an eerie, foreboding sort of way before he slunk off to his room.

It took less than ten seconds for Riley to figure out what its purpose was on her own, now that Anger was a part of the Headquarters crew.

For the remainder of Taylor's second year, Anger did an awful lot of driving, and no one – not even Riley – was brave enough to challenge his regime. Although Fear, anxious that temper tantrums were going superglue Taylor to the time-out chair someday, lifted a finger once in a while to try his hand at it, that same finger was usually pulled back singed and burnt or otherwise mangled beyond recognition.

Anger took no prisoners – when he felt provoked by phrases such as _"Don't touch that"_ , or _"Sit still"_ , or _"Let's go"_ , or, perhaps his least favourite phrase of all, **_"NO"_** , he simply seized the two levers that answered to his fists and let the world know that he was there.

He certainly did a much better job of this than Riley. And for a little while, Anger's daily sessions with the console were clamorous enough to distract her from her promise to outshine the invisible barrier between her and the world. It had been rather pleasant, actually, to focus on trying to improve Taylor's waking hours instead – at least, it was as pleasant as it could be, between Taylor's volcanic tantrums.

At least the extinguisher had only been called upon once so far, when Disgust had been standing just a little too close to Anger before he spontaneously erupted. Needless to say she remained treacherously unhappy about the incident for days afterward. Fire extinguisher foam was _not_ her colour.

About the only mandatory routine that didn't upset Anger was bath time. The instant Taylor found herself up to her eyeballs in bubbles, Anger's embers would fade back into his head and he would shrug, signaling to the others that they could relax and share the console like they were supposed to.

Joy's list detailing why bath time was her favourite could go on for a mile, at least. "We can finally take off our glasses, and the water feels so nice, and we can splash, and—"

"And get clean. That's the whole point. Remember?" Disgust stood at an angle, watching Taylor play over her shoulder. "Although there's something I still don't get. Why does soap smell so nice, but taste so…bleagh?"

 _"Bleagh,"_ moaned Taylor, who had it again for the umpteenth time.

"Add that to the list of life's most irritating mysteries," groaned Anger, as he moved behind the group to stand with Riley. He caught her eye and glared at her. "If I was in charge of the universe, soap'd be edible."

Riley chuckled. "Yeah. Sure. Why not?"

 _"Alright Taylor. You look clean to me."_ Dad rolled up his sleeve and swirled his hand in the water below the faucet, searching for the plug. _"Let's get you out of the tub before you turn into a raisin."_

Fear's eyes doubled in size and he opened his mouth to—

"Figure of speech," Riley affirmed, holding a finger up to him. "Can't actually happen."

"Oh. ( _Whew.)"_

Anger's fingers were arching into dangerous fists at his sides. He spoke through his teeth. "I hate when Mom and Dad trade places for stuff like this. Dad cuts _everything_ short. Hasn't anyone else noticed? It's really starting to get under my skin."

 _"No get out,"_ said Taylor.

 _"Yes. It's time to get out,"_ Dad replied in a voice that was not to be fussed with.

Joy spun around on her heel, thrusting her hands up. The day had gone well for them so far. She, perhaps more so than anyone else, had worked very hard to see to the sunshiny success of the afternoon, and she was eager to end the day on a comparable note – not on a tantrum. "Dad's just…you know…being Dad," Joy bubbled, doing a poor job of masking her inner qualms. "He just wants us to be prompt and sufficient, you know, just like him. And he's got a point. Our fingers _are_ getting kinda pruny."

Disgust puffed up indignantly. "Gross."

Dad pulled Riley's little sister out of the tub and began to towel her off. Noting Taylor's lack of spirit with a disapproving gnaw of her lip, Joy went on to embellish her speech with boisterous movements against the console. "But that doesn't mean the fun's over. Sometimes, you just have to find it."

Taylor found an instant of vulnerability through which she could pull the towel out of Dad's fingers as he dried off her hair. She cocooned herself in it and took off to a corner of the bathroom, throwing the towel over her head. "And sometimes," Joy sang, "Dad has to find _us_." She could hardly contain herself. "He'll never know we're here."

Riley grinned, rolling her eyes.

 _"Taylor…"_

Taylor glanced at the floor and could see his socked feet approaching her from beneath the curtain of the towel. He stooped to handle her. She squealed, discarding the towel altogether, narrowly dodging his hands as she ducked between his legs and arrived at the opposite side of the room. Taylor eyed her underwear, folded neatly on top of the rest of her outfit, with an impish twinkle in her eye.

 _"Come on, Taylor. I want you over here on the count of three."_

Joy was practically dancing in place. "Ooooooh, I just had the best idea ever! I know what'll turn him around." She twirled at the waist, observing Riley pointedly. Riley knew, from this look, that it was her obligation to see what Joy had stashed up her non-existent sleeve.

 _"One."_

Taylor's underwear found its way onto her head.

 _"Two."_

She looked up to Dad, who came close, so very, _very_ close to smiling – Joy was on her tip-toes, her fists drawn beneath her chin as she waited for it to break loose and shower them with its love, its classic familiarity…she could sense its approach. Riley knew it, because she could feel it too.

She could have _sworn_ she could feel it.

 _"Three."_

…but she had been wrong. Dad merely withered, putting Taylor in the shadow of his stern eyes.

Riley began to frown.

So did Joy, whose rigid enthusiasm waned – but only for an instant. She wasn't about to give up. Joy hovered indomitably over the console and thrust a gear forward. "Okay, then. Here we come."

Taylor ran toward him-  
 _  
"_ ThinkfastDaddy!" Joy chortled as Taylor blew through the curtain of towel Dad had been holding out for her, and tore down the hallway, naked, wet, and bringing a storm of laughs behind her while all of Headquarters cheered her on.

Riley was succumbing to a dizzying spell of déjà vu so strong... she chose to close her eyes and savour it. Riley would immediately regret misdirecting her attention when a peal of thunder, or something akin to its terror, shocked her awake again.

 ** _"TAYLOR!"_**

Taylor froze in mid-step, wide-eyed.

 _"Now."_

All of Headquarters, Riley being no exception, in turn mimicked Taylor's immobility. The cheering voices were blown out – arms thrusting over the emotion's heads fell to their sides at once. As Taylor turned to face her father, Anger, Disgust, and Joy melted away from the console like ice below his fiery gaze, leaving Fear alone to defend the helm. He looked once to Joy for direction, met not with Joy's typical smile and enthusiasm, but instead with a rare glimpse of her brand of shock. And then, in desperation, he turned to Riley, who was only barely watching him from the corner of her eye.

Riley's gaze was fixed for the most part on her father, whom she simply could not _believe_.

Fear's antenna retracted behind his shoulders as he groped for something to seize on the face of the console, in the hopes that this would help steady his hands. Wobbly fingers stumbled awkwardly over the sliders Joy had ushered forward and without hesitation, they eased the gears back toward him, converting the console's beams from yellow to violet. Fear swallowed and propelled Taylor forward. Step by little, tiny, timid step. Her head was held low; her enormous eyes trained upwards, locking on to his in spite of how difficult it was.

"G-Gee, Dad," Fear stammered, "we…w-we were just having a little fun with you…"

There was the piercing sound of a whip-crack as Dad snapped his fingers at the floor in front of his feet. _" **Now** , I said."_

Fear whimpered as Taylor hurried forth, unable to look up at him anymore, obliging Taylor to screw her eyes shut. He plugged codes into the console without having to watch his hands as they slaved over it. "Sorry, sorry. Yes, Dad. Sorry. R-right here."

Fear continued to drive as Dad worked Taylor's clothes onto her body in silence until she was dressed, whereupon he breathed a tired sigh and creased his brow. _"…When are you going to listen when you're asked to do something, Taylor?"_

He was referring to her tantrums. Everyone knew that. But there had been no tantrum this time. They'd worked hard to keep that from happening. Anger's hands were clean. "W-we were just playing Dad," Fear insisted, his voice hoarse and dry. "Honest. We're _really_ sorry." The other emotions began to chime in with him, nodding their heads.

Riley wished they wouldn't. They had no reason to apologize. They'd only tried to make Dad smile. Taylor was being scolded for a crime Dad had made up on the fly. And it was infuriating her.

 _"Well, I'm not putting up with it anymore. You're going to your room."_

"Huh? _Wh-what?_ Our _room?_ " Fear was beginning to panic. Dad wrapped his hand around Taylor's and began to lead her in that direction. "B-but why? What'd we do?" He turned to his colleagues and folded his hands imploringly, visibly resisting the urge to fall on his knees before them. "Don't let him take us _there_ – what if he never lets us out? What'll we do? Who'll we play with? What if we starve? Someone lend me a hand up here – I-I don't know what to do!"

This had fast become too much for Riley to bear. The injustice of the circumstance made her want to spit. She knew her father wouldn't have treated Taylor like this if she were out there, if that spark behind his eye had never left the world along with Riley's exhausted spirit.

The door to Taylor's bedroom clicked shut. Fear gawked up at the doorknob, speechless. Taylor eyed it too, as though waiting for her father to change his mind, to come in and pick her up and hug her, and let her resume the day with him.

Fear's hands squirmed within each other, humiliated by his failure to alter the incident in some better way. Though really, what could _any_ of them have done? "…I don't understand…w-was it something I said?"

"…No." Joy's voice was ghostly and very, very small. "…that was my fault. I…I don't know what came over me." A shiver raked its frigid nails down Riley's back as Joy wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "…it's just…once upon a time…I know that would have worked. I know that would have turned everything around."

"And you know what? It should have."

Everyone lifted their heads and turned to Riley, now inspired by a twinge at the back of her neck that prickled the stippling there, and caused her body to ache. "I don't know what he wants from her. I don't know what it's supposed to take to make him look at her the same way he looked at me. But I'm losing my patience. He's driving me crazy. And he's hurting Taylor."

She began to storm toward the console, seizing Anger's forearm along the way. He burned to the touch. _Good_ , Riley thought, as she dragged his bewildered self up to the console. His Overflow pumped through her, turning the would-be blood of her essence into magma.

"Wait-wait-wait!" Fear attempted to block their path. "Don't you think Dad's upset enough? I-I really don't think we should tempt him with—"

"Then maybe he shouldn't have messed with my little sister! Out of the way."

She brushed past him, watching as he hid behind Joy and Disgust's shoulders from her peripheral. "Th-that's a lot scarier from the outside," Fear stuttered.

Without allowing Anger a second more to protest, Riley slammed her free hand down to a lever on the console, forcing Anger to sandwich it beneath his bulky palm. The console rumbled to life and ignited beneath them, turning all of Headquarters a scalding shade of red.

"C'mon, Taylor. Tell 'em how you _really_ feel."

And Taylor obeyed, roaring a kitten's roar as she pitched her innocent stuffed animals at the door. She tore her _Cutiepie Princess: Magical Friendship_ comforter off of her bed and let it flop into a heap on the floor. And then she fell onto her knees and tried to pull up the carpet with her two-inch fingers (she succeeded in pulling a single hair loose from the fibers). And finally, she flopped into her mess of blankets and screamed.

With that, Riley tore her hand out from beneath Anger's, finally letting him go. She heaved over the console for breath, feeling awkward and pained the minute she began to reconnect with herself, and realize what she had done.

Anger couldn't stop staring, even as he paced away from her to join the others behind them. No one could, in fact. Their gazes stung. She rounded upon them slowly, her eyes shifting. Dark. And embarrassed. "…that was stupid," she uttered. "I shouldn't have done that." She glanced at Fear, who quickly averted his eyes and took a step back from her. "…I-I'm sorry," she said ineffectively.

Once again, the weight of the world came crashing down upon Riley's shoulders, only this time, she wasn't sure if she'd recover from the impact as she had done so many times before. The stormclouds surrounding her and her father were so dark that now that she felt lost at sea. Lost, sinking and utterly useless. Not a single attempt to communicate with him had paid off. And now, her attempts were beginning to backfire, making matters worse for everyone.

Especially for Taylor.

"…Riley?" murmured Sadness. "…I think I should drive for a while."

It pained Riley to let her step up to do so.

And it pained her walk away from the others, to journey to some corner where she could pretend to know what her purpose was in this strange, complicated place.

But she never made it even half so far.

 _"Beg your pardon, ma'am…?"_

A voice parted the thick, uncomfortable silence of Taylor's room that had Riley spinning on her heel so sharply that she almost stumbled and fell.

 _"Is this seat taken?"_ A long, cottoncandy-pink trunk double-tapped a corner of the blankets Taylor had come to roost in. She shook her head no in response, her mouth agape as she blinked into a sprightly pair of lime-green eyes.

The emotions were gawking up to the window. Dumbstruck. Flabbergasted. All of them tried desperately to deliver so much as a single word. Anger's brow boosted skyward; Disgust's tongue struggled silently in her mouth; Fear pointed with a hysterical finger; Joy was being consumed by a brilliant game-changing smile. Sadness was locked rather comically at the console, either hand floating just inches above the control panel. She couldn't so much as twitch.

 _"Thanks a lot. You're a pretty good host so far,"_ her visitor went on to say as he plunked down in front of Taylor. _"I'm sorry to just kinda barge in without an invitation. I really don't like to intrude – goes against my code of conduct, you know – and if there's one thing I dislike more than intrusions, it's eavesdropping. I swear over the freshest jar of peanut butter in the pantry that I didn't do that on purpose. That's the kind of thing happens when you've got big ears."_ He fidgeted them to prove his point. " _It's just that I happened to be in the neighborhood and I couldn't help but overhear that you know Riley. I'm her imaginary friend, see. She and I go way back. When I heard that someone in town knows her too, I thought to myself, 'Wow, now THERE'S a kid who really knows how to fall in with the right crowd! So I've been itching to ask ever since, just to be absolutely sure – do you _**really** _know Riley? THE Riley?"_

Joy crept toward the console on wobbly ankles. She tread her way across the floor in a soft, bemused trance, her eyes fixed upon the events taking place beyond the window. Her contagious bliss grew and grew, until Riley could practically sense it from where she stood.

She moved to take Sadness's place at the console.

And she just drove.

Taylor couldn't resist a curious smile.

She sat up, rubbing a fist under her eye to foil the tear that had been poised there. _"Well, yeah! I know Riley!"_ She recoiled, suddenly, biting her lip. " _Um_ _ _–_ I mean – I think I do. I… **sort** **of** do. K-kinda?"_ The grin on her visitor's face was beginning to dwindle. _"…Er…well…okay. I don't know Riley_ exactly _. Not very well. I haven't met her or anything. But I've seen lots of pictures of her. And I've heard some pretty funny stories. Riley is all Mom and Dad will talk about sometimes. She's my big sister."_

 _"Ah-HA! I knew it!"_ he rejoiced, spreading his arms wide through the air. _"I knew you two had to be sisters!"_

 _"You did? How?"_

 _"Call it intuition. It's all up in here."_ He arched his trunk up to his derby hat, where he apparently stored all of his, well, what he called his 'intuition'. The hat was coming off, and he bowed to her – to the best of his ability, seeing as he was still seated. _"The name's Bing Bong, by the way. Very pleased to finally make your acquaintance, Miss, er…?"_

 _"Taylor. My name's Taylor."_

 _"Taylor! Now that's a nice name. And I should know. I'm an expert on names."_

"Really?"

 _"Oh, absolutely. In fact, I'm what some might call an Expert on Everything. Go ahead. Ask me something. Anything you can possibly imagine. I'll probably know all about it."_

Taylor suckled on her fingers for a moment. _"Um, okay, let me think. Mm – oh! I've been trying to ask Mom this one for a while. Maybe you'd know. What's a sister?"_

 _"What's a sister? Ha! What's a sister?!"_ His smile abruptly vanished. He dropped his hat into his hand while his trunk busied itself with an itch behind his ear. _"Boy, you really got me there. Why is it people always start out with the_ toughest _questions? Maybe I gotta tone down my whole 'Expert' pitch a notch or two."_ He inhaled, composing himself, and returned his hat to his head. _"If I had to guess – which I do, as you know – I'd say a sister is a bit like, ahhh….a little bit like your relationship with Boots. Except Riley's not a cat."_

Taylor frowned.

 _"…Never mind. Ask me something else. Something a little more, erm…up my ally."_

 _"Well...maybe you can help me figure something out. You see, um, I just had a really rough go with Dad..."_

 _"Oh no. You did? Gee, that's too bad."_

His entire body slumped, and those once happy-go-lucky eyes of his were now a-twinkle with sympathy.  
 _  
"Yeah. It was awful. And scary. And it sure didn't make any sense to me."_

 _"I'll bet it didn't."_

 _"Any ideas?"_

 _"Gee, I dunno, Taylor."_ Bing Bong began to twiddle his thumbs together. _"The guy's got some…issues. Let me put it that way. While I was scoping out this place to see if it'd be safe to pop in, I sort of got to know him a little better, and I'll tell you right now – not even us Experts'll be able to get the whole scoop on him. He's very well-layered. You know? Like a Gobstopper. Very tough to work your way through without biting. And it's that kind of behaviour that can earn you ten whole minutes in time-out faster than you can sing the ABCs. And hey – I happen to know you're one of the fastest."_ He winked. _"It's best just to stay out of his way for a while if you know what I mean. Play it low-key."_ He shrugged. _"That's all I got."_

 _"Oh."_ Taylor sighed, and drew into herself a little. _"That's okay."_

 _"…I'm sorry to hear that things didn't go so good with your Dad all the same. I take it that's the reason why you're a jailbird on this fine afternoon?"_

Taylor groaned. _"Eee-yep."_

 _"Ouchies."_

 _"Mega ouchies."_ Taylor shivered. A terrible thought crossed her mind as she looked up at the door, wondering if she'd ever set foot outside of it again. She shook herself, suddenly, overwhelmed by her need for a positive distraction. _"I think I have one more question for you, Bing Bong."_

 _"Okay, shoot."_

 _"You're Riley's friend, right?"_

 _"Well, yeah, only her very best."_

 _"What's she like?"_

Bing Bong's eyes lit up, and Taylor knew she had finally stumbled upon just the right question for him. _"Oh, Riley's swell. She's got hair like yours, and blue eyes, and she's fairly tall. Just tall enough that you could probably ride on her shoulders. And let's see, what else, ahhh – she smells like vanilla cupcakes, she sounds a little bit like Princess Jasmine, and she's got all sorts of magical powers."_

 _"Really? Magical powers? Like what?"_

 _"For starters, get this: Riley can see without her glasses…"_ He leaned in close to Taylor, deadpan. _"… **Perfectly**."_

 _"Whoa."_

 _"Yeah. And since she's an Angel, she can fly, somersault, cartwheel, and do the Macarena with her eyes closed. She can grant wishes, and she can read minds, and she can turn anything she wants into sprinkles."_

Taylor felt a little dizzy. She had been under the impression that Riley was quite wonderful…but she didn't know that Riley was quite _this_ wonderful. Now, Taylor wanted to meet her more than ever. She voiced this to Bing Bong as she crept forward to sit just a little closer to him. He seemed very welcoming of her presence and had no objection at all to cuddling. " _Do you know where she lives, Bing Bong?"_

 _"Oh, sure; she's over in this cozy little place called Heaven."_

 _"Where is Heaven?"_

 _"Not nearly as far as most people think it is. It's just over the moon. All you really need to get there is a GPS and a half-decent rocket. Didn't take me very long to get from there to here. So who knows. Maybe you will get to meet her some day."_

 _"I hope so. She sounds great."_

Perhaps a little _too_ great.

A deep, dismaying sensation began to slink around her as she thought of Dad, and wondered if he was sad that Riley had moved away to Heaven. Maybe that was part of the reason why he never, ever smiled.

Very in tune with her emotions, be them loud or soft, Bing Bong insisted that she move into his arms for a hug, and Taylor was glad to accept. She wound up curled upon his belly, which was very soft and warm.

 _"Yeah…Riley's pretty great. One of the greatest. Maybe even THE greatest. I certainly think so. But you know, I got a good feeling about you, too, Taylor. I bet it's because you're Riley's sister. It's sort of like she's passed everything on to you. Maybe through the mail, maybe through the drain...Riley works in mysterious ways. But there's something pretty magical about you. I could tell the minute you said my name."_

A bashful grin sidled onto Taylor's face as she found a thumb for sucking on.

 _"…Hey, Taylor?"_

 _"Mmhmm...?"_

 _"…Do you think I could I stay with you?"_

Taylor nodded her head sleepily. _"Mm-hmm."_

 _"…I have a feeling you and I are going to be very good friends."_

Taylor smiled.

 _"…Maybe even best friends."_

Taylor had no doubts.

The same could be said for the several astonished figures inside of her Headquarters, who exchanged warm, wonderful looks with one another.

Joy and Riley, especially, could not express how tremendously delighted they were to finally witness Bing Bong's miraculous return, lighting Taylor's darkest hour.

Once again, Riley knew, somehow, that everything was going to be okay.

She was going to need the emotions' help to weather the storms that were sure to follow.


	7. Bringing Memories to Light

_I can't apologize enough for how slow this update was to take place. I've not been feeling like myself lately, I think life is burning me out a bit; sitting down to do the things I love has started to feel emotionally taxing. This isn't meant to be an excuse, just an explanation. I am really really sorry though. :c_

 _I do want to thank you again for taking the time to follow and to all of those who have shown their appreciation for this little tale thus far. It means a lot to me to know people are enjoying it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Hope to have the next update up in the next few days, along with a few new...things ;3 Thanks again, everyone.  
_  
 _~KQSimply_

* * *

The Minnesota sun was in front of them, warming their faces; San Francisco's stars twinkled at their backs. An endless breath of wind was tugging at their clothes and their hair, prompting the sunflowers to genuflect to them as they passed through.

By now, Riley didn't have to wonder anymore – she knew they were lost. But it was okay. They had each other. Time whispered its stories to them as they walked, filling up the silences whenever the pair immersed themselves in the golden landscape expanding before them instead of conversation. The silent gaps never lasted long. There was just so much to say.

"What's so great about Minnesota?"

Riley flung her gaze to the sky, a long-suffering smirk scheming away on her face. "Everything. I've only told you that, like, _one thousand_ _times_ since we started running away, Taylor."

"Is a thousand more than a hundred?"

"Uh, yeah. By a lot."

"I bet I could count to it in five seconds."

"Let's hear it then, goofball."

"One, two —"

"— Skip a few—"

"— Ninety-nine—"

— and they hollered together: "One thousand!"

They laughed and laughed.

Taylor stopped, shepherding a fat caterpillar from its home on a sunflower petal onto the plush ersatz landing strip of her palm. "Is Minnesota nicer than Heaven?"

The warm breath of air was dying away, its temperature falling along with it. Riley struggled out of her black hoodie and pulled it over Taylor's head to keep her sister warm. "Taylor...I've been trying to tell you for the longest time now that I've never actually _been_ to Heaven."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. But it's like you don't want to listen to me or something. It's kind of frustrating."

She flicked her eyes above her again – the fluffy white rabbits, mittens, camels and mushrooms floating along Minnesota's share of the sky were shimmying out of the stars' way as they tried to take over too early. Midnight-black was burning through the daytime-blue, revealing its galaxies and nebulas that made her feel so very, very small. Riley took Taylor's hand – they had to hurry if they were going to reach Minnesota before dark.

"Sorry Riley. It's really hard to hear you sometimes. I just kinda… _feel_ you. I don't hear the things you say to me. But I try. I know you're with me. I know you're there." Taylor's fingers wriggled in hers. "...Sooo…If you've never been to Heaven, how come everybody says that's where you are?"

Riley bit her lip. "That's just where they all assume I went, I suppose."

"What does 'assume' mean?"

"It makes an – _er_ – I'll, uh, tell you when you're older. Come on, Taylor, hurry up."

"But then, where _did_ you go when you died?"

"I….I came straight to you."

"How come? Why'd you come to me instead of just going to Heaven?"

"…I don't know, Taylor."

Just then, Riley stopped running. Taylor slammed into her back and groaned, having to re-adjust her glasses. The sunflowers around them were winking out of existence, one by one, as San Francisco's night drew its shadowy veil over the area.

"…Riley? What's wrong?"

Riley was still. Still and silent, as they stood together on a barren plain of soil.

An old, buried abstract memory was gasping for breath within her. If she hadn't stopped to listen, she would never have recalled its faint 'whispering', the way it had lapped over her as she lay in her hospital bed, peacefully drawing her final breaths. Until this moment, she'd forgotten about the experience, about the illusory sensation of a 'hand' that wasn't – perhaps the 'hand' of space and time itself? – folding around her own, issuing awareness upon her in a 'voice' that she couldn't hear or feel, but could recognize, somehow, and could understand, someway.

 _Don't worry, Riley. Just trust yourself. You'll know exactly what to do,_ the moment had explained.

Would she? She'd never really taken the time to think about it. She was so focused on helping Taylor here and there, in witnessing the magic of Headquarters take place before her, in building her relationships with the Emotions, her strange, eccentric Afterlife Family, that she'd let herself forget about actually rising to the task of serving a purpose in Taylor's mind.

She wondered if her dozens of given and failed attempts to connect Taylor – and by proxy, herself – with her father counted?

 _And when all is said and done, you'll know when it's time to come home,_ the moment had also assured her.

Again, would she? But how? And when? And – _no!_ 'Going home' implied too heavily that she would have to sever all of her feathery ties to Earth and its tangible beauty, its abundance of wonder, its cycles, its mysteries, its life. Riley had long since accepted that her body had just been too tired to keep going, that her corporeal form couldn't actually be with Earth and its loveable inhabitants, but her _spirit_ , the genuine Essence of Riley, wanted nothing more than to celebrate its survival of its former sunken vessel. Her spirit wanted nothing more than to _thrive_.

And Taylor…after coming to feel so incredibly close to her baby sister…how could she _possibly_ leave her? Who would be there for her when no one else could be? Who would be there to help her make decisions, to tutor her to be the best Mini-Riley she could be?

Who would make her father realize that Riley was only a Taylor away?

She couldn't leave.

She didn't _want_ to leave.

And she decided then and there that she wouldn't. No moment, no matter how powerful or prominent, before or after life, could make her leave.

There was a terrible cacophony of shrieking, accompanying the entrance of loud, eerie choral music warbling into the air. Riley turned, half-expecting to spot fire and brimstone spewing up from the ground to emphasize her darkened thought process. Instead, if she squinted through the darkness that swallowed their naked field, she found Taylor screaming, whipping a ringing cellphone down to the soil.

"Aah! It's Mom! She's on to us!" Taylor stumbled to Riley's side, clinging to her arm for dear life. Her eyes were shaking, wide, and startlingly _violet_ as they gawked up at her. "I knew running away to Minnesota was a terrible idea! I felt it in my gut! Why doesn't anybody ever listen to me?"

Riley recoiled. "... _Fear?_ Is…is that you?"

Another Taylor stomped up alongside them and crushed the cellphone beneath her foot, her fire-red eyes massive and enraged. "There. That'll shut 'er up. I'm not even old enough to _own_ a cellphone!" She snapped her attention at Riley. "If we don't get moving in the next five seconds, I'm gonna throw the MOTHER of all tantrums, right here, right now!"

"Wh-what–?" Riley's eyes fluttered; her head was spinning.

A third Taylor on her left scoffed bitterly, rolling her green eyes. "Running away to Minnesota _better_ be worth it, Riley, because my feet are killing me and I really need a bath. Are we almost there? I'm tired! This is the stupidest idea you've ever had."

The hideous trilling choir was getting louder as a fourth Taylor skipped into view, illuminating the darkness around them. "C'mon, what're we just standing around for? Let's giddy-up! Onward! March! Hey – can I ride on your shoulders Riley? Please? Pleeeeease?"

Riley dragged her hands down her face, roaring into her palms. "What is going _on?!"_

The sky suddenly unzipped itself, initiating a downpour that drenched Riley and all four Taylor's at once. Shrieking in stereo, they scuttled up to Riley's waist, demanding shelter and progress. They pulled her sleeves, her hair, yanking her to the left, then snapped her arm to the right, then forcing her to stumble forward.

"W-we gotta get out of here before we get rained on to death! Is that possible?!"

"Let's move it already, I'm going stir-crazy!"

"And for the love of God, make that stupid music stop!"

"C'mon, c'mon, this way!"

Her senses overloaded, she nearly failed to register as someone tugged persistently on the bottom corner of Riley's shirt from behind, provoking her to twist at the waist. Her own eyes, wild with bewilderment, sunk into those of a fifth Taylor. This one's sigh bounced off of the raindrops scattering around them as she stared, her deep blue eyes languid and heavy.

"You're dreaming, Riley," she moaned.

Riley's consequent gasp echoed off the walls of Headquarters as she bolted upright, realizing that she'd fallen asleep on the console. Yet again.

 _"UGH, I am SO not cut out to be an Emotion,"_ she thought to herself as she caught her breath. After all, it was painfully true.

The control panel spun beneath her as she attempted to compose herself, fighting the burn in her chest and leg muscles that lingered as though she'd _actually_ been running. To make her wakefulness even more difficult to discern, she became aware that the repulsive choral music was _still_ ringing in her ears, loud and clear.

 _…Happiness…_

 _…is what we sell…_

 _…That's why everyone…_

 _…loves BnL!.._.

Riley whipped her attention over her shoulder and ran a palm down her face. "Oh, _great."_

Riley and the Emotions could collectively agree that the Buy n Large song one was thus far one of the absolute worst ditties Taylor'd had the misfortune of encountering, and banishing it from Headquarters was often a complicated art form. It was bad enough to make Anger combust, cause Disgust to leave the room, and rip the smile off of Joy's face in a befuddled eyeblink. Fear was convinced the song possessed mysterious brainwashing powers; Riley assured him that this wasn't true…though sometimes, she had to wonder.

Her eyes scurried across the control panel, which had expanded and doubled in size now that Taylor was nearly five. Its _dozens_ of buttons, knobs, wheels, cranks, handles and faders were overwhelming to observe, twice as taxing to study, and three-times as stressful to operate. Riley was getting better at performing routine, non-influential tasks, but didn't fair very well without guidance from the Emotions, who were still in their rooms. _They_ could conduct the console with ease. Riley, meanwhile, stumbled, was humiliatingly slow, and had to refer to the manuals more times than she cared to admit.

"Okay, okay, um, overriding memories on the projector, I _know_ this sequence, I _know_ it, uhh…"

Taylor, meanwhile, was fighting to wake up, but with Riley alone at the console, this was a slow, painful process. She was no longer as fond of mornings as she'd been when she was a toddler and had made a habit of lounging in bed after waking up – the Emotions were more than happy to follow suit whenever she did this, leaving Riley in the main control area alone.

 _"…Bing Bong?..."  
_  
There was something of a cross between a hiccup and a loud snort from beneath the bed. Riley peeked up from her efforts against the control panel, surrendering to a smirk. She loved to hear his cheery voice in the morning, and often questioned how she could've let herself forget a figure as sweet as Bing Bong.

She was so thankful that Taylor could have him.

 _"Hck – Today's episode was brought to you by the letter Clownfish. I mean – wha…? I-I'm awake."_

 _"Were you singing in your sleep again…?"_

"…Maaaaaaaybe?"

 _"…you got that crummy commercial stuck in my head again…"_

"Aw, don't blame Bing Bong, Taylor, this is kind of my fault. I should've been paying more attention. Some big sister I'm turning out to be..." As Riley continued her attempts to eject the memory, Taylor rolled over in bed and rubbed her eyes. Now that she had glimpsed the pink rays of sunrise peeking in through her butterfly curtains, she wouldn't be falling back to sleep anytime soon.

 _"…If this keeps up, Bing Bong, I'm gonna have to tell mom to take you to the doctor's…"_

 _"Ooh, I **hate** the doctor's. They're so invasive!" _ It was only now that Bing Bong crawled from his place under the bed – he slept there to keep the monsters at bay – and entered Taylor's groggy view; the bedroom swam behind him as he replaced his hat on his head. _"Hopefully this is just another twenty-four hour thing. Or maybe it was something I ate. You and I polished off that jar of Fluff in one go last night, after all, and Fluff's notorious for dishing out the weirdest dreams...you couldn't blame me for singing while I snooze in THAT case."_

 _"…Uh huh…I told you not to eat so much."_

 _"I know, I know. You were right. I couldn't help myself. One spoonful just lead to another, and, erm..."_

Bing Bong's curtailed confession caused Riley to pause, her smirk tucking deep into the side of her face. "Oh, c'mon, B.B., even _you_ know you're imaginary. You can't let Taylor blame EVERYTHING on you."

 _"It's okay, I'm not mad…but when Daddy finds out about this, he's not gonna be happy."_

At this, Riley's spirits deflated. Her father wasn't happy about _anything_ anymore. And Taylor, growing wise at the age of four and three quarters, was finally to picking up on this. It was heartwrenching to listen to her, and subsequently the Emotions, questioning why he wouldn't look at her, play with her, or interact with her beyond what Riley could only describe as _Obligatory Babysitting._

It had become so painful to witness that there were times when Riley would quietly excuse herself from the area altogether, shrouding herself in an icy silence with her back to the view. Before, whenever she did this, Sadness was the only Emotion keen enough to take notice of Riley's departure, and the two would sit alone at the back of Headquarters, hand in hand, sharing moments of despair with one another. Nowadays, when Dad's detachment got the better of Riley, Sadness was instead compelled to sneak interactions with the console, or worse, with Taylor's memories when the others weren't looking, tainting them blue. Riley didn't have the heart to report this to Sadness's colleagues. She knew they'd be disappointed in her. Riley believed it was only a fair reaction on Sadness's part.

She was so ready to put a stop to it, to put this continuing situation in reverse, but…what was she to do from in here? She'd been wracking her brain for almost five years now. _  
_  
There had to have been something. Some solution. Some way to make things right. _  
_  
 _"Let's, uh, let's just cross that bridge once we get to it, Taylor. How 'bout that."_

 _"Yeah. Sounds good."_

Bing Bong stood, stretched, and settled himself on the bottom edge of Taylor's bed _. "So. What're we gonna play today? We gonna go spelunking in some dark crystal cave? Or find a damsel in distress that needs rescuing? Or heck, maybe it'll be a prince, I dunno. Boys really aren't so bright, you know, there's bound to be at least one or two out there who desperately need your help."_

 _"Mmm…I dunno, Bing Bong. I think we should just go back to sleep."_

Bing Bong – and Riley – paused, as though unsure if the words had actually come from Taylor's mouth.

 _"Back to sleep? Aww, that's no fun. We've got a whole day ahead of us!"_

 _"I know, I know. I just feel kinda…'blah. Too 'blah' to play right now."_

"That's because _somebody's_ Emotions are being extra lazy today." A sardonic grin slithered across Riley's face as she glared down the door at the top of the ramp. A better strategy would've been to leave the area and wake up the Emotions herself, as she sometimes had to do, but this particular morning, the blankness of her sister's voice – especially once she compared it to the cheer it possessed in her dream – weighed heavily upon her shoulders, and though she spun away from the view in order to gaze out the windows to Taylor's Long-Term Memory, she couldn't bring herself to leave the console just yet.

Taylor needed her to stay close. She knew this, somehow. This was not the first time Taylor let her feelings of 'blah' interfere with her treasured playtimes with Bing Bong, and as she was far too young to understand what was causing them, Riley had long since taken it upon herself to try to help. Her many efforts and suggestions remained futile thus far.

Riley was beginning to suspect that though Headquarters had developed into a fine, fully-functional establishment, housing all of the Emotions in the midst of its exquisite, modern interior, something was still missing. The Emotions still tread its flooring as though it was foreign ground, and the daily spectacles that had once seemed so magical and captivating, such as making new discoveries, learning new words, new actions, new songs, were growing old too fast for them.

Yes. That was it. Something was missing. And 'it', whatever it was, was balanced on the very tip of her tongue, just waiting to be announced. She wanted to blame it all on her father and his blatant coldness toward Taylor, of course, but she figured other options deserved a little research too. So, as she looked out to Long Term, she thought long, hard, and in silence, her back to view.

 _"…Another bad case of the 'blahs', huh? Well...okay...we could try to go back to sleep. You never know, you might have one of those weird early morning dreams you like so much."_

 _"Hmm. Yeah. Maybe."_

Taylor's sigh was followed by a long pause, punctuated by the songbirds trilling outside…her delicate heartbeat, her petite little breaths…Bing Bong's muffled purrs. Riley leaned her head back, closing her eyes, indulging in the peace of the morning through Taylor's ears.

Whenever they fluttered open, they were again focused out the window, out to the dizzying shelves of Long-Term Memory, over the deep, yawning pit of the Memory Dump, out to Taylor's floating Islands of Personality. Her Artsy Island, featuring Taylor's love for doodling and crafting and inventing things...Her Stubborn Island, which had come to exist with thanks to Anger and his steadfast desire to please Riley's request to do her proud...Her Family Island, featuring a large figure of a doting female, a cat tangled around a child's feet, and a male figure standing in the background, mostly obscured by the female figure's shadow...

She'd barely begun to part her lips when the door to the Emotions' resting quarters burst open; a flurry of colour and hysteria erupted through the frame and made its way down the ramp. Joy was leading the group, and only Fear had come close to matching her haste, but he wound up tripping on a shoelace he'd neglected to tie, squeaking like a dog's toy beneath Anger and Disgust as they trampled across his body. Riley was certain the world was ending – not because everyone was shouting her name as they rushed toward her, but really, what else could've been more important to poor Fear than making sure both of his shoes were tied? Her spine locked up tight as she steeled herself for terrible news.

"Riley, Riley, Riley!" Joy seized her by both hands, sending thrills through her arms, her body, tickling her sides, pulling laughter up from the depths of her core. No news was terrible, so long as Joy had her by the hand. "Come on! You've got to see this! You're going to love it, I just _know_ you are!"

"What? What is it?"

Joy didn't answer, dedicating all of her attention toward hauling Riley across Headquarters and up the ramp, only pausing to help Fear back into an upright position. ("Iii'm okay," he croaked, swaying on his feet.)

They worked together to hustle a most dazed and baffled Riley up to one of the doors. She'd been about to laugh at them and question their hectic motives again when she double-took, her eyes locked dead ahead.

There was a sixth door in the Emotions' resting quarters.

It stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest, due to its stark...normality. It was very plain, white and straightforward, like any other bedroom door in San Francisco.

Each of the other doors leading into the Emotions' rooms were very distinctive and unique to the individuals who slept behind them. Joy's, for example, was yellow and pleasantly crooked, adorned with a blue, star-shaped nameplate, scrawled upon which in cheerful lettering was her name. Sadness's door, next to Joy's, was blue, round and short, a bit like Sadness herself, and was marked with a little hanger in the shape of a droplet, where her name was written in gentle cursive on its smooth surface.

The only thing that felt more out of place in Headquarters than this door was Riley herself, who frowned the instant Joy let her go.

"Do you know what this is?" Joy pried, leaning in close. Riley couldn't answer; Joy did her the favour before the silence could last. "I think this is your room. Your own room, Riley! At last! It's finally here! Aren't you excited?"

"Yeah. What're you waiting for?" Anger nudged her with his elbow.

"I'm dying to see what it looks like," gasped Disgust, her eyes twinkling.

"Go ahead, Riley! We'll be right behind you." Fear grinned toothily, nodding from behind his colleagues. He'd never looked so eager.

Even Sadness looked curious.

Everyone was certainly more enthusiastic than Riley, who felt, for reasons unknown to her at first, incredibly apprehensive. She gulped and looked down to the brass doorknob. It rattled as she closed her fingers around it and squeaked as it twisted within her palm. Slowly, and not before she closed her eyes, she pushed the door open, indulging in her self-inflicted darkness as she paced forward, hoping that the others would do the dirty work of reacting to the room for her. No one, to her great displeasure, said a word. When she could stand the silence no longer, Riley opened her eyes at last.

White walls, stern and unpleasant, glared back at her. White, bare-naked walls, and a single bed.

Nothing more.

She wasn't sure what else she'd been expecting. For vague, unvoiced reasons, she hadn't anticipated anything good...but she hadn't been ready this, either. This inhospitable, echoing sparseness, forcing her to recall the barren field in her dream, first, and then, those chilling words from the day of her death:

 _And when all is said and done, you'll know when it's time to come home._

A prickly sigh resounded from her chest, ringing against the desolate walls, picked up again the ears of the five Emotions standing in silence behind her. Gradually they shuffled deeper into the bedroom, tossing their gazes about.

Joy, visibly conflicted as her eye flicked from one wall to another, was trying to rescue the situation, trying to find a single silver lining to direct everyone's attention to. This was normally one of her finest specialties, but her hopes had been so high at first…Riley supposed she was still struggling to recover from the initial crash.

"…W-well, it's…it's got this, um…it's r-really…"

"…Sterile?" Fear suggested, raising a finger.

"Y-yeah. Sterile." Joy's beaming grin was fighting for life on her face. She didn't seem to think Fear's input had been very helpful.

Fear tucked his hands beneath his arms, looking about as comfortable as one might in a room that was _not_ empty, but in fact was terribly crowded, full of entirely too many people who were just as naturally awkward as he was. "Yes indeed…veeeery, aah…sterile. Just like a room in one of those nice, fancy insane asylums. _I-I mean_ – no! _No._ Did I say that out loud? That's not what I meant. I was trying to—th-that is, I was going for more of a—"

"Actually, Fear, I think you pretty much nailed it." Disgust paced forward, sweeping one of her delicate hands into the air as only a Dramaqueen might. "No colour, no furnishing. No comforts of home. It'd be perfect for Riley if she, oh, I don't know, committed arson in broad daylight with no pants on or something."

Anger threw his hands into the air and dropped them loudly against his sides. The air around him sweltered. "It's like Headquarters Development didn't even try. What was the place thinking? Riley can't stay in here! She'll go crazy! Where's a complaint box when you need one?"

Riley inhaled through her teeth. The sound, pained as it was, enticed the Emotions' rapt attention. Everyone's brows softened as they turned to regard her. Sadness, especially, looked upon Riley with deep, profound eyes. They sparkled as they reached to touch Riley's clothed arm.

"…No, guys, it's…it's alright. It is what it is, I guess." Her chest tightened. It was too much to try to talk around it.

This was her sign. Her cue. It had to have been.

She lifted her eyes to the others, wincing, rubbing her arms in the curves of her palms. "…I was just...I guess I was just sort of hoping that having a room would help me feel as though I..." She sighed. Unable to look at them directly anymore. "...as though I belong here. With Taylor. And with all of you."

It pained her to say it out loud to them for a number of reasons. For one, it solidified the thought in her head that she was meant to 'go home', where ever 'home' was meant to be, for it might not have actually been in this mysterious place. For another, the looks that washed over the Emotions faces as she spoke – the way Anger's valiant stance declined, the shadows that darkened Disgust's mortified eyes, the pitiful way in which Fear blinked up at her and whimpered, the devastating way in which Joy's smile left her face…they forced Riley to realize how much she'd come to appreciate their company. Even in spite of their flaws, their imperfections, their quirks.

They were her Afterlife Family. And in addition to how dearly she'd come to love Taylor, she loved them too. And she didn't _want_ to leave.

Suddenly, Joy straightened, her lips pressed into a firm, determined line.

"Emotional huddle!" she shouted.

Before the others knew what was happening to them, she was shoving her reluctant colleagues back into the hallway. "Wait right here, Riley."

Riley uncrossed her arms, turning at the waist to follow them as they were forced to make their exit. Immediately, frantic whispering amongst the five of them began to take place. Her stomach lurched – it was difficult to tell if they were upset or cross without being able to determine their tones of voices. Fear gasped – Joy shushed him. Anger _chuckled_ , and a chill rippled through Riley's bones to hear it. Exercising great caution, she made to approach the door and request to join the discussion.

Joy had her by the wrist again the minute she came to be too close. Everyone (save for Sadness) sported _ridiculous_ smiles as they lead Riley back down to the main floor.

"Alrighty, then," Joy panted, "so the final ruling is that your room is the worst."

" _Absolutely_ the worst," Disgust added.

"Yep. And you know what? I agree. I give up. I lose, these guys win. I tried to find something nice about it and I just couldn't."

"Boo hoo," chided Anger. "About time Joy admitted defeat for once, right Riley?"

"Uh huh. Yep. It's true. It's all over. Guess you'll just have to stay out here forever."

"Yeah. Ouch. That's too bad," shrugged Fear, who was very visibly forcing a nonchalant demeanor upon himself. He failed to convince anybody…even, quite possibly, his own self.

Subtlety had never been the Emotions' strong points.

They left Riley on the sofa, working together to force her to sit on it. "C'mon, you guys, I know you're up to something. What's going on?"

Joy pointed a finger at her as she made a backwards retreat toward the ramp once again. "You just…sit tight for a second."

"Stay right there." Disgust swept after her, taking Sadness's hand to hurry her along.

"No peeking, now." Fear took his leave alongside Anger...

…who opened the door again and jabbed a finger in Riley's direction. "Seriously. _Don't move."_

Muffled chaos ensued the instant Anger closed the door behind him. There was the frantic scuffling of feet, the rolling and shoving of objects, tearing, tumbling, hammering, and eventually, shouting, as their personalities sparred with one another as they often did. Eventually, Riley stood up. She couldn't stand it anymore. She had to eavesdrop. Just a little. She crept up to the door at the top of the landing and pressed her ear against it.

 _"Let's put this here."_

 _"And that over there."_

 _"Stop! Don't you dare! That'll clash with everything!"_

 _"Hey, you – get up there and put these on the ceiling."_

 _"Me? Why me? I hate heights…"_

 _"Hmmm, we need something else, something nice and bright and – watch your step!"_

"AAAAAGH!" There was a terrible crash, the collapse of a tumbling body (or two), followed immediately by a wailing, wobbly: "I'm good! No need to come in here! _(D-does this look sprained to you!?)"_

It was too much.

Riley leaned her weight into the door to bid it open, parting it only a few insufficient degrees from the frame when there was a soft thump, a woeful cry, and the door would budge no further. Riley spotted the edge of a blue slipper and cupped her hands around her mouth, letting the door swing closed again. "Oh – Sadness, I'm sorry! I didn't realize you were there!"

She could hear the other rubbing her face, fixing her glasses. "They told me to stand watch at the door," she moaned. "I think they just wanted me out of the way."

Poor Sadness.

The Emotions made Riley wait for several torturous minutes outside of that door. She became so engrossed in the task of suppressing her impatient half that she just barely noticed when the chaos from down the hall came to a stand-still, and all of Headquarters fell silent.

The door was pulled open from the opposite side, and she was greeted once more by the eager faces of her five eccentric roommates.

 _"What the -_ You moved!" Anger observed, casting Riley a look of wicked scorn. "Cheater."

"Gimmie a break. You know how much I hate waiting." A shaky grin expanded on her face as she swapped glances with the group in front of her. "Sooo…should I be concerned?"

Joy bit her lip and stepped forward, flourishing a finger at her. "Close your eyes."

Hesitantly, Riley obliged, giggling as a happy thrill skipped and frolicked through her system. Joy had her by the hand. And then she startled – butterflies danced merrily in her stomach. She could only assume this meant Fear had taken her other hand. Probably to make sure she didn't trip or stumble.

Together, with their colleagues flanking her sides, they lead Riley forward.

"That's it! Right this way."

"Watch your step, now."

"And don't peek 'til we tell you, either! I'm onto you, Riley."

"I'm not gonna peek. I promise." Though it was very tempting. A door had opened and then closed behind her back.

They paused. For effect, she gathered. She loved and hated it in equal measure.

"…Okay, Riley. Now."

With their permission, Riley opened her eyes.

The room, though dim and dark, was _alive_. A muted ballet of colour and flickery light. Caustic rays of gold, ruby and emerald, with subtle whispers of sapphire and amethyst, danced their tales along the floors, the walls, the new surfaces that had been moved into the room. She was surrounded by the glowing orbs of bright memories that spanned across the colour spectrum. And at first, while she was enamored by the warm, lively spectacle, she simply failed to understand.

Thankfully, one of the Emotions was keen enough to pick up on this. Someone whispered, "Look up," and Riley obliged. Her heart fluttered. A dozen or more luminous five-pointed stars beamed back at her through orbs of every colour, warming the ceiling with their silhouettes. The memories of her bedroom stars hung above her like chandeliers. It was mesmerizing. Magical. Riley's gasp got caught in her throat.

Then, a new light was born to her left, and Riley spun at once to its source – the feathers of her fluttering heart came undone as it melted in her chest. Next to her bed, tucked in the violet and golden marble of a memory, was her old hockey lamp.

"…Oh…oh my _gosh_ …"

It was the most intelligent thing she could utter at first as she twirled on her feet, light-headed as she drank in all that her lit surroundings had to give, quenching her desperate thirst to _belong_.

"…Do you like it, Riley?"

Riley curved her gaze to the Emotions gathered around her.

Tears lavished her face.

 _"…Like_ it? I – you guys, it – i-it's _beautiful_. It's _perfect_." She paced the perimeter of the room the Emotions had recreated for with careful and creative placement of memory orbs, her eyes swaying to and fro as she danced along the fluffy trim of cloud nine.

"I-I...thank you. Th-thank you all so much."

Joy slid into her view, her disarming smile now impossibly bright. "You _do_ like it? You really do?" Riley nodded heartily, tears jumping from her lashes, and Joy squealed, drumming her feet in place. "Oh, Riley, I'm glad! I'm so _glad."_

"But, but how..." Riley skimmed tears from her face with her fingertips. "How did you guys…?"

"Oh, some of it is just odds and ends from our own rooms," Joy explained hastily, shedding additional light on the bed as she altered her position. "Like the blankets, for example, those were Sadness's."

Riley scanned the room for Sadness's position. "I've got plenty anyway," Sadness affirmed. There was a hint of a smile playing at her lips. "They're really soft and comfy, Riley. I hope you like them."

"And the pillows were kind donations from Anger."

"Yep, guilty as charged. They're perfect density for punching when life gets stupid." Anger smirked and slammed a fist into the opposite palm. As quickly as he excited himself, he relaxed again. "But they're also pretty comfortable. And flame-retardant. Er, not that that'll matter to you, I suppose. Whatever. They're good pillows." He murmured under his breath: "And you're welcome, or what have you."

"And Disgust provided your vanity."

Disgust was still standing in front of it, in fact, fanning her fingers through the elegant flip of her hair. "We can do our hair together in the mornings, Riley!" she said as she studied Riley's reflection as it hovered over her own shoulder. "You know…Just like we used to do."

Riley smiled lopsidedly, tucking a wayward wisp of her own hair behind her ear. The material possessions were lovely, but there was still a question sizzling away on the tip of her tongue. "But where did you find these _memories_? Aren't they…aren't they mine?"

"Hey, what's yours is ours," Fear cut in, grinning at her. "And, vice-versa. We all kept a number of memories from our old home – you know, from when we lived with and made memories for _you_." He regarded the memory of the hockey lamp with a gushing fondness. "Remember all the times you and I made the wise decision to leave this guy on all night, Riley?"

Of course she did. All of those nights that left her feeling warm, secure...at home.

Disgust stole Riley to the vanity, directing her attention to the left of the furnishing where a shadow box was held, containing a single, very bright golden memory. "Your hockey lamp pales a little in comparison to _this_ , though, don't you think?"

Riley's jaw dropped. "M-my Sidney Crosby poster?"

"Of course, yes. Those dreamy eyes, that gorgeous hair – _unf_ , he's STILL got my approval. And yours too, right, Riley?"

"Oh _God_ yes." The room's air grew heavy with the illusory fragrance of hockey sweat and cologne. Riley's lashes bobbed as she gnawed her bottom lip.

Fear cleared his throat into the fist of one hand as he folded the other most beguilingly behind his back. "Er, right, gang, I think we ought to give Riley and her, ah, _poster_ a little bit of privacy, here."

Riley forced her eyes away from the memory, poorly masking a chuckle at herself. "Hold on; you still haven't answered my question. How the heck did you guys manage to bring these memories out into the open like this?"

"Look, Riley," said Anger, trying and failing to suppress a grin, "some things are best left unexplained. Don't ask so many questions; just work with the results."

Joy nodded. "The important thing is…they're yours to enjoy, now." She took Riley by the hand and lead her a few paces forward, gazing up to the stars floating above their heads.

"Joy's right," said Fear. "And, uh, don't listen to Anger." Anger growled beneath him – Fear sought refuge by stepping closer to Riley. "I mean, given this one particular situation, I kinda have to agree with him, but for the most part, Riley, ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. Especially ones that start with 'What If'."

Disgust was the one to begin leading the other Emotions out of the room. "We've been over this, Fear. It's not 'What If', it's 'Whatever'."

Joy beamed cheerfully at Riley, shrugging her shoulders before she skipped after her colleagues. "I always preferred to ask 'Why Not'."

And Sadness, last as usual, shuffled after the rest, her head hung low. "I just sort of like the desolate echoes of ' _Why_ '..."

Suddenly, Riley was alone, amid the rippling surface of luminous colour. It was quiet, still, private. She couldn't recall a time where she'd experienced such overwhelming peace. At least, not immediately.

Then, as she lowered herself to the edge of her bed, admiring her hockey lamp, her stars, the fingerprints she'd left on Earth that the Emotions gave her as gifts to keep, she remembered the day of her death. The day the air whispered sweet songs to her, taking away any semblance of pain or suffering, allowing her rest after she struggled for so long.

That was this moment.

That was this moment all over again, except this time, she was left with the ability and the will to smile and simply indulge. Her heart was glowing within her.

Lingering tears trickled down either of her cheeks. She drew a calm, sobering breath. And as she blinked her eyes again, bidding them over the dozens of glowing orbs that had contributed to Riley's life, it finally dawned on her.

The fog was dissipating.

The things that were missing from Taylor's life made themselves clear to her.

The Emotions had spread themselves all around the control room, busying themselves with various productive tasks while Taylor lounged in bed. She saw Anger rifling through his papers, naming off the major developments that were taking place outside of Headquarters, and she found Disgust dutifully dusting off the mechanisms of Short-Term Memory. Sadness had absorbed herself in the pursuit of Knowledge, her nose buried in a Mind Manual; Fear was hard at work at a typewriter, drafting up an unpleasant long list of worst-case scenarios for the day. Joy, meanwhile, was struggling with the Console itself, attempting to wake Taylor up once and for all.

Bing Bong, after all, still wanted to play. Whenever Taylor opened one of her eyes...so did he. Eagerly.

Riley laughed through her nose from the top landing; in turn, the Emotions stopped what they were doing and flung their attention at her.

"It's like you guys don't even realize how amazing you really are," she told them, smiling wide. Especially at their subsequent confusion. "I think it's high time we put it to use."

Joy invited herself to lean, to practically sit, in fact, on top of the console, her eyes wide and excited. "Care to elaborate?"

"Yeah, Riley, what's up?" Anger set his news paper down in his lap.

 _"Darn it,"_ cursed Fear as his keys jammed up on him. "I mean – what? What'd I miss? What's going on?"

"I'm talking about Core Memories," Riley continued, thrusting enthusiasm into her own voice. "What you guys did for me, helping to create the best memories a girl could ask for...We need to start doing that for Taylor. We need to kick the memory-making into overdrive. We need Core Memories."

Sadness looked over her shoulder and out the window, counting them with her eyes.

"Shouldn't there be more out there?" Riley made her way down to the main floor, pressing her hands against the window. "Taylor's almost four years old. She starts Kindergarten at the end of the summer."

"Don't remind me," groaned Fear as he struggled to tame his own typewriter.

"How many Core Memories did I have by the time I was her age?"

At this, the Emotions hesitated, exchanging curious glances with one another, hoping to find answers written in bold on each other's faces, perhaps. Their silence was rather disturbing. "...C'mon," Riley pried. "It wasn't that long ago. Did I have Five? Seven? Ten?"

Joy began to twiddle her fingers, averting her eyes from Riley's.

"I'm sure I had a Family Island," Riley went on, trying to encourage their memories. "What else?"

Anger drummed his fingers against his lips. "...Uh...Let's see, there was, uh..."

Disgust pinched her eyes shut. "I can practically still see them...I _think_..."

"Hold on," gasped Fear, thrusting a finger in the air, "i-it's on the tip of my tongue..."

The residual echoes of Riley's Eureka moment began to fade into oblivion. She felt terribly discouraged. How could it have been that her Emotions would forget her own set of Core Memories? Perhaps as she grew and her Core Memories were replaced, the Emotions cast the old ones aside entirely...? Riley supposed this was likely, in any event. She let the thought carry her spirits back up again.

"...What about hockey? Was there anything to do with hockey?"

The suggestion caused everyone's eyes to light up in unison.

Everyone's, that is except for those of Sadness, who pressed her lips into a fine line, casting her compassionate eyes downward. Silent, separate, and...perhaps a little sad.

Before Riley could question her, the Emotions perked up and tossed answers at her, at long last.

"Oh, yes, yes, hockey!"  
"Right!"  
"There was _definitely_ something hockey-related out there."  
"Yeah, you played hockey, didn't you, Riley?"

Riley couldn't help pulling her eyes away from Sadness, passing her gaze over the faces of the other Emotions as things came back to them.

Hockey. Of course. Why hadn't she thought of hockey before? It'd be the perfect place to start. She grinned and looked once more out to Taylor's three Islands of Personality, imagining where something bursting with hockey paraphernalia would fit.

 _Don't worry, Riley. Just trust yourself. You'll know exactly what to do._

This was it. Or, at the very least, this was a step in the right direction. She would teach her baby sister how to shine bright yet. And what better way to connect with Dad than to step onto the ice with him again in her old petite skates, through Taylor's tiny figure?

Riley rubbed her hands together. "Alright, then, team. It's settled. Prepare yourselves for Operation Hockey Island."


	8. Operation: Hockey Island

_Happy thanksgiving to my Canadian homies! I am thankful for so many things, including the fact that my husband is a chef :'3 I am also thankful because OMF WTF IDGAF TGIF Inside Out Digital HD Release tomorrowww (which means RILEYSFIRSTDATE?) ahhhhhhh~_

 _seriously is anyone else freaking out_  
 _no_  
 _k_

 _Speaking of the film, though, I should really be mentioning each chapter that this story has its heavily spoilery parts, and this chapter is no exception. I'll be making small updates to the beginning of each previous chapter to indicate that there might be spoilers for future readers. My bad. :c VERY sorry if I spoiled anyone so far._

 _Anyway, in addition to that I'm thankful for those who have stuck with the story this long, for all of those who have chosen to follow the story (seriously, 100 followers, that is so flattering! yeeeeek! c': ), and to those who have been so kind to leave their thoughts behind. Hope everyone enjoys chapter 8!_  
 _~KQSimply_

* * *

 _"...Hey, Bing Bong? Where'd you go?"_

Taylor traced her fluffy friend to a corner, where he was seated at a tiny blue tea table with a stuffed rabbit, a beanbag dragon, a vintage GI Joe action figure and Rex, a green dinosaur who was wearing a most becoming purple sundress. Bing Bong drew a deep, elegant breath through his trunk and tipped his hat to the group. _"Would you excuse me, ladies and gentlemen? Our Future President would like a word with me."_

He crossed the room and joined Taylor beside her bed, pawing gingerly at her feet through the blankets. _"...What's up, pal?"_ The words You Wanna Play were visibly poised on his lips, but he held his breath, hoping for Taylor to suggest it instead. It had been so long since she had, after all.

Taylor yawned, stretched, and finally pulled the covers away from herself. Bing Bong was about to cheer, but he quickly closed his mouth, forcing himself to keep respectfully quiet as Taylor spoke over top of him _. "So…Riley was really good at hockey, right?"_

 _"Oh yeah, she was the BEST at hockey! Probably the best in the whole entire world. Why do you ask?"_

Taylor grinned. _"I had an idea not long ago, and…well, I dunno, I think maybe I should play hockey too, just like she did."_

Bing Bong arched his hands through the air. _"Hey, that's a swell idea! Riley would be all over it, I'm sure. And who knows, you might even end up on TV!"_

The thought sent tiny thrills through Taylor's body. A part of her always wanted to be the star of something, and she often dreamed of being on television, though her dreams never featured her in a hockey rink, necessarily. She was usually on stage, her purple ukulele in hand, playing for thousands and thousands of fans.

For certain, ukuleles and hockey did not mix. Taylor shook herself, pushing instruments and stages as far from her thoughts as possible. _"That's the plan,"_ she said as-a-matter-of-factly. _"Now I just gotta start playing!"_

 _"Yeah, okay!"_

There was an awkward pause. The two stared back at each other with anticipation written all over their faces, but they weren't sure what they were waiting for.

 _"...Ummm…How does hockey work again?"_

 _"Oh. Yeah. Guess it'd help if you knew the ins and outs of the game, huh?"_ Bing Bong's eyes lit up and he thrust his hand in the air. _"You need someone to teach you about it?! Ooh, ooh, right here, pick me!"_

Naturally, Taylor smirked and waved him on. _"Go ahead, Bing Bong. Tell me everything you know about it."_

Calming himself first, Bing Bong straightened and assumed a scholar's sophisticated posture. He then closed his eyes, drew a set of spectacles out of thin air, poised them on the bridge of his trunk, and began. _"See, you take ten or so grown-up men and put them in a giant room with white kitchen flooring – they call it the 'rink'. There they must run around with butter-knives tied to the bottoms of their shoes and squabble over a can of tuna somebody painted black, with the objective being to get in as many fist-fights as possible without the man in the striped shirt catching them. Whoever spends the least amount of time on the Time-Out bench wins."_

Taylor sprang up and clapped. _"Makes perfect sense so far!"_

Bing Bong took a graceful bow. _"Well, naturally. I'm an Expert on Everything after all."_

Riley slapped a hand to her forehead and left the console to pace back and forth. What she wouldn't have given to travel back a few moments in time and kick herself in the shins for feeling so confident about Operation Hockey Island before. Somehow, though by now she was much wiser, she'd been certain the subject would've come to Taylor naturally, especially given the Emotions in charge of her Headquarters.

Anger padded after her for a few short footsteps, his palms splayed earnestly before him. The air around his body was very warm – she was clearly frustrating him with her lack of enthusiasm, but was too frustrated herself to try to rectify the situation. "Come on, Riley, we're trying our best here. Things are just so…different, now. It's just not the same as it was when we were with you. You get it, don't you?"

"It can't be all _that_ different. Taylor's an Andersen. She's got _my_ blood. Right?"

Fear's fingers tap-danced against his jaw. "Well, yes, that's true…but are you sure blood's all that's got to do with it? I mean, didn't you start playing when you were really little?"

Riley paused, dropping her gaze to the floor. "I guess I did have a bit of a head-start…but Taylor's really not that far behind. There should still be a little time to get her started. We just need to teach her." Joy was about to gesture out the window when Riley thrust her finger into the air, commanding immediate silence from the other. "And no, we're _not_ going to ask Bing Bong any more questions about it. You guys are gonna to have to _unlearn_ everything he just told you about how hockey works. Pronto." She blinked at Bing Bong, who was polishing those gold-rimmed glasses on the scratchy seam of his coat before tucking them behind his back, where they were likely to disappear forever. "No offense, big guy."

"Okay," Disgust sighed, her arms now impatiently crossed. "So, I'm on-board with this Operation Hockey Island thing, but how are we supposed to just convert her into a natural like you were, when she knows literally nothing about hockey? Taylor doesn't play sports. So far, all she plays is the ukulele."

"Rather well for her age, I might add," Joy supplemented with a grin.

Riley shook her head at them both. "She needs exposure. That's all there is to it. When we lived in Minnesota, we went out on the lake every weekend and practiced, taught each other tricks, goofed around…that's how I learned how to skate so fast. And I scored my first goal when I was only three. Don't you guys remember?"

The others turned to Joy, who nodded hastily. "We remember what it meant to you, Riley."

The others' scattered voices agreed with her. "Yeah, well said, Joy," said somebody.

"But Disgust has a good point, " Joy went on to say. "And so do you. Taylor's experience with hockey is definitely, um…limited. Yeah. That's it. Limited. We just need to find a way to get our hands good and dirty."

"Well, not _too_ dirty."

"Of course, Disgust. That was a figure of speech."

"Whatever."

"Anyway, you get where I'm going with this. Any little push'll be a big help. Baby-steps, and we'll have a bright and shiny Hockey Island for Taylor in no time."

"…Baby steps, huh?" Riley turned her attention back to the view, kneading her lips beneath her fingertips as she hummed. "...There might be something hockey-related on Taylor's bookshelf," she mentioned. "Can someone help me give her a prompt?"

"Absolutely!" Joy skipped up to the console, inviting Riley's hand into her own. Together they held a key down, turning the console a brilliant gold, and all eyes turned up to the window as Taylor donned her glasses and focused on the bookshelf in question.

 _"Let's see,"_ Taylor hummed to herself, _"what else, what else, there's gotta be more…"_

 _"Good thinking, Taylor. Maybe Riley stashed something in there for you to check up on. So clever, that Riley...though it helps that she's also got yours truly working as her Royal Messenger, right?"_

 _"Uh huh."_

"What're we looking for, Riley? Stickers? A colouring book? Photo album?"

Riley narrowed her eyes. "I thought Mom kept some of my sports novels for Taylor to look through. Could've sworn I heard her talking about it once."

"Oh, er – wait – you're looking for an _actual_ book?"

There was a collective audible wince from the others crowded at Riley's back.

"Yeah, there's a bit of a flaw in your plan, Riley." Anger pointed over her shoulder, inciting Riley to look closer, realizing that through Taylor's eyes, the words on the spines of her books looked Greek. Or perhaps Russian. Or Mandarin Chinese. Or a strange combination of the three. "Taylor's only four and a half years old for Pete's sake. She doesn't know how to read yet. Cut her some slack."

Riley groaned, her head collapsing to one side. "Ugh. I guess I forgot." She turned her head, without necessarily facing anybody. "You know, that's something I still don't get. _You_ guys can read a little – why can't she?"

"Hey. What'd I tell you about asking so many questions?" Anger muttered, rolling his sizzling gaze onto Riley.

Everyone else just shrugged at her.

Sometimes Headquarters was a little _too_ magical for its own good.

"O- _kay_ …How about this:" Riley slipped her hand out from beneath Joy's and made haste toward the second level. "What if I took one of the memories from my room, something hockey-related, and just put it in the dock with her other Core Memories? That should jumpstart _something_ , right?"

Fear laughed from behind her, though he sounded more pained than amused, which provoked Riley to spin on her heel and find him in the crowd. "See? _RILEY_ thought it'd work." He was glaring obnoxiously at Anger and Disgust before his eyes found Riley's. "But uh, yeah, before you take another step, kiddo, I can confirm that route's a guaranteed flop. We'll just end up with an untidy Headquarters." He winced. "And possibly some bruises." He winced harder. "And likely a concussion or two."

Riley parted her lips in order to put his ridiculous exaggerations to rest when Disgust and Anger spoke in unison, monotonously: "Trust 'em."

Riley closed her mouth, with that, and sighed through her nose, exasperated. Taylor's eyes were beginning to drift, making it clear that other things were beginning to seem more appealing to her. Her toys, her picture books, her little ukulele. Wanting for just a little progress before letting her sister succumb to these trivial distractions, Riley straightened her back, studying Taylor's bedroom door. "Well..." The others regarded her as she fixated on the console. "There's still a more _direct_ way to introduce her to hockey, I guess. We could just have her ask Dad about it outright."

Anger shrugged. "…Couldn't hurt, I suppose. Sorta takes the magic out of it, but that'd definitely be...easier?"

And Disgust rolled her eyes. "Kinda true. I mean, Dad _would_ be an expert. When he's not on the phone or out of the house, he's, like, hypnotized by the stupid television, and you can guess what's always on it."

Concurring with a slow, easing breath, Riley nodded and sought Joy's eye. But before she could request her assistance, Fear coughed, and again, Riley impatiently shot her attention to him, suppressing the urge to ask _What is it this time?_

Any lingering semblance of humour, sarcastic or otherwise, had long since drained from his face. He was tugging profusely at the bottom hem of his sweater-vest. "Uh...hang on. I'm not so sure that's a...I mean, maybe we..." Suddenly he straightened, thrusting a strange, unfamiliar round of confidence into his voice and every gesture. "Actually, Riley? I think your previous idea would work a whole lot better. You go find a few memories from your bedroom to try, and I'll start working on, uh, setting up a place for us to duck for cover." He flashed an atrociously forced smile at her. Even Joy looked uncomfortable as she attempted to stomach it.

Riley furrowed her brow at him and he flinched in response. "Oh? I thought that idea was a _'guaranteed flop'_."

Fear chuckled nervously and crouched, putting himself at least two heads shorter than Riley as he stared up at her through the narrowing slits of his lashes. "I-I _did_ say that, didn't I? Well, there's nothing, er...IMMORAL about giving it another shot for shiggles, right? Or, you know, if you're nervous about it too, we could just wait and see if we learn all kinds of things about sports once we start kindergarten. It's just a few months away. I can wait."

"Kindergarten? No way. I'm not waiting _that_ long for her to get into hockey. And where'd you pick up the word _'shiggles'?"_

"Uh...daytime TV?"

Disgust beheld her coworker in silence, looking as though she had just swallowed something her sensitive gag reflex could barely tolerate.

Anger, without a lick of patience, _couldn't_ look at him anymore. He shook his head in Riley's direction, his eyes stationed skyward. "I don't know either, Riley." He often read her thoughts with relative ease, and this moment had been no exception to the rule.

Riley knew better than to neglect the opinions of Anger and Disgust in the first place. In her growing experience living with personified Emotions, their perspectives were ones she tended to prefer, directly alongside Joy's, in fact. Ignoring Fear's incessant stammering at her back, she approached the control panel, beckoning for Joy to join her with a curly index finger. Taylor's gaze lifted once again to the bedroom door. She stood and toddled toward it, her tiny hand reaching for the doorknob as Riley and Joy moved to the front in unison.

Steps away from their destination, Fear suddenly threw himself between the pair and the console, bracing himself against any further advancing with two sweaty, trembling palms.

"Stop!" he hollered. His voice cracked. "…Just…wait a minute. Please? I-I really, really, _really_ don't think this is such a good idea."

Riley was dumbfounded, rooted to the spot for the fault of a number of reasons. She lingered in vain for Joy to speak up first, but could sense that the other, just barely outside of her peripheral, was also hesitant, and that she, too, was having difficulty perceiving the dark gravity of Fear's eyes. They were wide and heartfelt, dancing to and fro. Desperate. She could very nearly hear them pleading with her to understand.

"Fear?" Riley uttered slowly, pacing one step closer to him. Fear tread backwards in retaliation, pressing his spine against the edge of the console. "...What's the matter?"

Unable to maintain direct eye-contact with anyone any longer, Fear's gaze vaulted all over Headquarters, seeking unsatisfying points of refuge here, or there. "It's just...I-it's just that–" Finally, he pinched his eyes shut and let his words overflow. "He – he's always so _busy_ – he won't have time for stupid little questions – we shouldn't bug him with this – he might not be in the mood – he's got enough on his plate – we really shouldn't bother him, a-and–"

A low whine shuddered beneath him as he fumbled for the console's edge with the base of his palm, sending rippling vibrations through the air that caused Riley's stippled essence to tingle. The console's beams shifted to violet, and Taylor's hand flinched away from the doorknob. Realizing his mistake, Fear twirled around, spotted Taylor's fingers curled apprehensively in the air before her, and the antenna-like hair atop his head bowed between his narrow shoulder blades. Having made Taylor too nervous to attempt leaving her room, Fear, visibly ashamed, could not so much as glimpse the dismayed faces of his colleagues out the corner of his eye.

It left Riley speechless behind him. And as she reconsidered his string of words, studying his silhouette as it trembled into itself, she realized she could not recall a time Taylor had approached Dad without some dire reason or out of sheer necessity. One could go as far as to say Taylor actively _avoided_ him. A possibility she'd yet to consider dawned on her, then, accompanied by a sharp sting against her core as she gently called Fear's name again. Though her bid warmth and tenderness into her voice, he struggled to face her nevertheless, his every blink and gesture simply riddled with guilt.

"…Fear…You're not… _scared_ of Dad, are you?"

The suggestion kicked Fear's habit of rummaging with himself into overdrive. His tongue squirmed clumsily in his mouth as he tried to speak for himself, but with an audience containing the aghast eyes of Disgust and Anger, this seemed to be an impossibility. He did turn hopefully to Joy, but even this thwarted his efforts, for once; Joy was visibly upset by his unvoiced confession too.

Finally, his entire body caved as he expelled a long, defeated sigh. "…I'm not in trouble, am I? A-are you mad at me?"

Riley's shoulders drooped; she tsked piteously before she spoke. "Of _course_ we're not mad at you."

She was very careful to say 'we', though passing her eyes over those of the others proved that everyone seemed as quick to forgive him as she was. Even Anger was maintaining his cool, though he appeared as baffled by Fear's response as she could have expected.

"And you're definitely not in trouble. I just wish I'd known. I wish you would've told me." To be honest, for not knowing, she felt like a fool. "...You know you can tell me things like this, don't you?" He was red in the face as she spoke, and Riley could only imagine she was too. "How long has this been a…a thing?"

Fear moaned, his eyes downcast. "...A while," he muttered.

"…What's a while, to you?"

"…Ah…about a year, now. Or two. M-maybe three. I don't know. I was trying so hard to keep it to myself, I guess I lost track of the time altogether…" He massaged his shoulders with his palms, and as he cringed while he did so, Riley nearly succumbed to an urge to take his hand, forgetting about his unpleasant Overflow for a split-second. "…I'm as excited about a new Hockey Island as the rest of you, but…w-well, don't the rest of you remember what happened the _last time_ we tried to make a Core Memory with Dad?"

Riley lobbed her puzzled gaze onto Joy, now, unsure of what Fear was referring to. The suggestion to craft more Core Memories was a very recent thing – the three glowing orbs resting in the dock had come to exist more or less by surprise over the course of Taylor's second and third year. But, to Riley's surprise, she could not keep Joy's eye for long either. In fact, the sunny Emotion's natural smile dwindled remarkably at the echo of Fear's words and her bare shoulders stooped.

"…Sadness?" Joy squeaked, her starry eyes now trained on her friend who was seated on the farthest sofa. Sadness hadn't uttered a word since the excitement over Operation Hockey Island was first drummed to life. She looked up now, sweeping the thin, glittery curtain of hair that obscured her view out of her face, and her body expanded with a single, shallow breath. Joy, meanwhile, exuded a sad smile that left Riley feeling cold inside as she watched the other cross the room. "…Do you still have that memory tucked away somewhere?"

Sadness, now blank, merely stared back at Joy at first. Her distinct hesitation left Riley with the impression that Sadness thought the request to be somewhat unnecessary. She almost looked poised to argue and decline. But who was anyone to refuse Joy, when her smile appeared so weak and uncharacteristic?

Sadness's brow knitted in what appeared to be concentration, but developed, to Riley's shock, into a state of despair. Tears lined her eyes as they hovered into space, but no one moved to console her. Though Riley was moved to pity, the others regarded her as though she were the intricate operations of a very delicate procedure, and little else. Just as Riley's muscles were about to insist she step forward to comfort her and ask what was wrong, Sadness closed her eyes, allowing her tears to flow freely down her cheeks. She collected one onto the very tip of her index finger and held it away from her face.

Gravity overcame the weight of the little teardrop and it eventually dripped from Sadness's finger, falling no more than an inch through the air before magic once again took hold, slowing its progress until the droplet was very nearly floating in mid-air as it began to increase in size and luminosity. Reflections danced within the fluid, and as it grew into larger and larger of a sphere, Riley could almost hear what its innermost reflections had to whisper.

 _"Come back here, you little Monkey!"_

She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard that precious, precious nickname.

The air surrounding the crowd in Headquarters was tinted a faint, icy blue as Sadness tucked her palms around what was no longer a tiny teardrop, but was now an old, severely faded memory. Riley, slack-jawed as she beheld it, watched as a familiar scene unfolded within its marble circumference. There was Dad, scurrying after a little tiny Someone with an open towel. He was smiling. It was too good to be true. A part of Riley wanted to doubt it was Dad in the first place, with a smile as bright as that, but it could be no one else. The vision of him in this faint, sad memory rendered her tongue weak and feeble as it moved to voice her bewilderment.

"...When...when was _this?_ When did Dad and Taylor _ever_ have so much fun together?"

Sadness gawked up at her through her endearingly large glasses, gradually rocking her head. "That's not Taylor," she said, her voice cotton-soft and humble. "...That's you."

 _"...Me?"_

Without a prompt, Sadness offered the memory to Riley's hands, letting her squint into it for herself.

...And so it was. Riley and Taylor looked so much alike in their toddler years, not even _she_ could hardly tell them apart.

She rewound the memory with her fingers, watching her father closely. A dull ache began to pool in her chest.

"...That was one of your earliest Core Memories, Riley." Joy's voice, soft and tender though it was, jarred Riley out of her trance. "It powered an amazing Island for you."

"Goofball Island," Sadness uttered.

"But this memory wasn't _always_ sad. Actually...it was something you and I made together. And even as you grew up, even as things started to change inside...I was always so proud of it. It remained as one of my favourite Core Memories for _years_. Not just because it was so happy...but it powered a part of you that could make other people happy, too." Riley's eyes dipped; she could see that Joy had clenched her hands into tiny fists. "Other people like...l-like Dad. So...years ago, when I tried to make that same Core Memory again with him and Taylor, it...I thought it would just sort of... _work_. I still don't understand why it didn't. I don't know what the difference is between then and now."

Fear swallowed audibly. "But Dad knows. He _must._ " He swiveled on his feet and entered a swift code on the console in order to summon a memory – a visual aid, to compare Riley's Core Memory to Taylor's failed duplication to the projector. "He sees something in us, now, that just wasn't there when we were with Riley." The memory that sprang up across the display was tainted a most unpleasant purple. Shadows were elongated; the hallway Taylor stood in seemed cold and foreboding; Dad stood before her as a wicked, unruly giant. "O-or maybe...maybe it's what he _doesn't_ see? Maybe he's looking for something that we just don't have anymore. Maybe it's something Riley had that Taylor just...doesn't." Dad's voice boomed in the memory, but his words were inaudible against the crackling thunder of his fingers as he snapped them at Taylor. Fear withered and turned his head away from the display, unable to bear it any longer.

 _"...When are you going to listen when you're asked to do something, Taylor?"_

Taylor, who winced and began to nibble the tips of her fingers, was through with the memory too.

And the others, who released a breath they hadn't meant to be holding, followed suit: Disgust looked down at herself, at her delicate hands, her dainty feet, and her brow creased, as though she was, for the very first time, somehow disgusted with herself, reluctantly resenting her every particle. Anger's breaths began to pass in and out of him in shallow spurts, and his eyes scanned the air before him, as though in search of some visible, lingering reason to feel as angered as he appeared. Joy and Sadness could only swap hesitant, agonized looks with one another.

"...I don't know, Riley," Fear continued meekly. "I don't really understand _what's_ going on anymore...but I _do_ know understand how terrible it feels. A-and I also know that if we stay out of Dad's way altogether, just like we've been doing, we won't _have_ to feel it. We'll just feel other things, like...well... I dunno, like..."

"...like Dad doesn't...love us anymore?"

Everyone brought their eyes onto Sadness, who abruptly huddled into herself, writhing her hands into a tight, solid knot. And for a long, painful instant, as her words echoed in everyone's hearts, Headquarters was for once tranquil, very still, deafeningly silent. As though the council inside were moved to a moment of silence, mourning the dead.

Riley was the first to straighten, drawing a series of breaths until she inevitably drew the one that allowed her to speak again. "...Fear...Dad is...Dad's so messed up right now. I don't know how else to put it. But it's because of me." There followed a soft collection of protests, but Riley held her hands up to them like a teacher to a class of children, and they fell silent before her. "It's because he doesn't get that I never really went _anywhere_. He doesn't get that I'm right here." She looked intently at Joy, who gave in to a helpless smile. "As soon as he opens his eyes, he'll see it. I know he will. And as soon as he sees it, as soon as he realizes I'm right here, things will change. It will literally change _everything_." Riley pressed her lips tightly together as she looked back up to the window. "And I know – I just _know_ – it'll start with hockey."

Making a point to reassure Fear with a nod first, Riley beckoned Joy forward once more. "Come on. We've got to give this a try. Not just for Taylor, not just for Dad...but for me." At this, Joy hesitantly made to approach Riley and the console again, transfixed by the idea that this would assist all parties involved. As Joy took the hand outstretched to her, and hope blossomed through Riley's chest as a result, she made a careful point to smile at Fear, and even went so far as to settle the steadying palm of her free hand on top of his shoulder. He blinked back at her; his bow-tie bobbed as he gulped. "One shot. Okay, Fear? Just let us give this one shot. If it doesn't work, we won't ever have to worry about trying again. I promise. But if it does...you'll thank me later. Trust me, you will. So...what do you say?"

Fear banished a great sigh from his breast, wringing his fingers together as his gaze flickered between the console, the window, and Riley herself. In a single motion, he took a step away from the console, folding one hand behind his back, gesturing through the air with the other, politely allowing the girls to pass him.

Riley and Joy assumed their position at the console, and when Taylor's eyes next hovered across the doorknob, they worked together to trigger her emotional response.

Anger, Disgust and Sadness remained in the background, their hands lenient against their sides.

"Hope you know what you're doing Riley," Anger grumbled. "This better not get us in any more trouble than it needs to."

"Trust her," hissed Disgust. "This is Riley we're talking about. Of _course_ she knows what she's doing. And if not, well...at least Taylor has the ukulele to fall back on, I guess."

Riley grinned at them both before returning her attention to the control panel below her hands.

"Go ahead, sis," she said under her breath. "I'm right here with you."

As though bolstered by Riley's words, Taylor puffed out her chest and marched once more to her bedroom door.

Out in the hall, the smell of breakfast was thick and succulent on the air, as were the sounds of the television downstairs. Taylor eyed the staircase and exhaled through her nose.

 _"Uh, Taylor? What are you doing?"_

Bing Bong appeared over Taylor's shoulder, anxiously tapping his begloved fingers together.

 _"I'm on a mission,"_ she replied, her voice a very harsh, very serious whisper.

 _"A mission? What sort of a mission? Is it a Super Mission? A Secret Mission? A - gasp! - a **Super-Secret** Mission?! Have you hired a captain yet?"_

Taylor shook her head. _"I don't think I'll need one this time. Wait for me up here, okay?"_

 _"Oh...Okay...but, uh, listen, Taylor, don't go doing anything I wouldn't do. Like, you know, crossing your Old Man. You be careful down there."_

Joy saluted her old friend and winked. "We will, Bing Bong. Don't you worry about us."

Taylor shuffled down the stairs and crept along the corner of the den, finding her father, in his PJs every bit as much as she herself was, seated on a sofa, his eyes obscured by the lights radiating from the television. Taylor glanced at the screen and could confirm that he was watching hockey highlights, as had become the norm. She hesitated against the corner, wondering if she should have avoided bothering him altogether, as her intuition was suggesting. Not only that, but breakfast was beginning to smell terribly tempting, and she'd far sooner take up a calm, encouraging, _safe_ conversation with her mother than try to strike something up with Dad, who often spoke to her in brief sentences that were ironically difficult to understand.

 _"Psst, hey!"_ Taylor turned, finding Bing Bong directly behind her again, tugging at his ears. _"C'mon, we just talked about this. You really shouldn't go in there. Not alone. This is one of those times you could reeeeally use a captain!"_

Taylor's eyes went wide; with Dad so close, she had to resort to 'loud' facial expressions which Bing Bong often had trouble reading. But he understood her this time. " _Oh, fine, you're hired,"_ her eye-roll announced as she began to tiptoe into the den, with Bing Bong trailing close behind her. She found, in fact, that his presence bolstered her spirits, easing the difficulty of her mission as she arrived in next to the sofa with her hands tucked tightly within one another.

She opened her mouth and then immediately closed it. She had no clue what to say or how to tactfully broach the subject. He was so engrossed by the screen that he did not bat so much as an eyelash now that she was close to him, though he did eventually greet her with a deep, sluggish _"Morning, kiddo"_ , which giving her a little start.

"How does he _do_ that?" Fear whimpered, hovering over Joy and Riley's shoulders. "H-how can he talk to us without even having to look at us? It, i-it really freaks me out."

"Deep breaths, Fear," said Riley as she coaxed Taylor to sit down in front of the television. "It'll be alright."

Taylor gawked up at the screen, watching as the hockey highlights took place up there. Bing Bong watched too, curling his tail around Taylor's waist as though to protect her from any threat that loomed in the room. This seemed to help her too.

It helped her enough that she, enticed by Joy, eventually rose her arm, pointed at the screen, and asked, _"So how come the hockey men wear butter-knives on their feet?"_

Riley clapped a hand to her forehead yet again. " _Thaaat's_ a perfect start, right there."

" _Whew_. You, uh, you really had me going for a second, Riley. I thought maybe we said something stupid."

"Er - yeah, Fear, I was being _sarcastic_."

Fear crouched, but it wasn't until Taylor looked over her shoulder, catching sight of the strange look Dad was giving her in response to her question, that he whined loudly and made to usurp the console. "Oh, that _look._ We're blowing it, big-time!" Disgust and Anger worked together to haul back on his houndstooth sweater, preventing him from doing so. "We gotta take that last one back, _now!_ L-let me go, you guys, come on–"

Taylor snapped her head back to the front when Fear's fingers narrowly brushed against a key at the far edge of the console. But, she eased as Dad finally sighed and answered her: _"Uh, no, Taylor. Those aren't butter-knives. They're wearing skates."_

 _"...Skates?"_

 _"Yeah. Skates."_

"Skates. Skates!" Joy beamed at the others, persuading Fear with her smile alone to calm down by a few degrees. Just enough that the other two could let him go. "Oh, that makes _way_ more sense than butter-knives did."

Anger shrugged his shoulders. "...It does? You think so?"

"Well...Hold on a sec; I'll settle this." Joy triggered another button on the control panel, with Riley's hands balanced on top of hers.

 _"Why do they wear skates?"_

Dad paused to relieve an itch from the corner of his eye. _"Well...they wear them so that the players can move across the ice a lot faster."_

 _"Why do they play on the ice?"_

 _"Er...Beeeecause it's Ice Hockey. So, according to tradition, it's, uh, it's played on the ice."_

 _"How come?"_

 _"...I don't really know, Taylor,"_ Dad sighed, his shoulders slumping. _"The Canucks are just strange sometimes."_

 _"What are Canucks?"_

 _"Canadians. People from Canada. They invented modern Ice Hockey."_

 _"Oh."_

There was a long, rather uncomfortable pause. Taylor's attention drifted back to the television, and she watched with mild curiosity (as best as she could without her glasses) as the game continued, as announcers baffled her with shouting and fast-paced talking she simply couldn't keep up with, despite how eager she was to at least try. Her eyes danced across the screen as though she could see symbolic visualizations of the words being hurled back and forth.

She hardly paid the game itself any attention because of this. To be frank, the game itself was a little too much for her. But she tried. With all of her might, she tried. Anger was one of the first Emotions to look over his shoulder at Stubborn Island as it began to power up, negating any desire she may have previously held to give up soon. He smirked to himself, proudly flattening his lapels. "Atta girl, Taylor," he muttered under his breath.

And then, of all sounds to occur in the den, there was a soft, mildly uncertain chuckle from behind her. Taylor turned around to face her father once again, and her eyes lit up to see that he was smirking at her.

Riley's eyes came to life as well, and she simply couldn't resist worming her hand beneath Joy's as she leaned her hands over buttons across the control panel.

 _There it was._

There was that glimmer, faint as it was. It was there. Struggling for life, begging for more.

It was _there_. _It was coming back._ Slowly...but surely.

 _Surely._

 _"...What's got you so excited about all of this sports junk, anyway?"_

And Taylor answered, without missing a beat: _"Riley."_

Dad's facial muscles twitched. The former smile collapsed from his face.

Riley flinched to see it, and in her peripheral, she saw that Fear hesitated too, and she could hear Sadness squirming with discomfort in her seat.

Joy, oblivious, flashed a tremendously proud smile as she rotated a wheel on the console, provoking Taylor to turn to face her father in full. _"I want to be a hockey star just like Riley,"_ Taylor sang cheerfully. _"And, and, plus, I can get lots of points, and beat up all the hockey men, and win all the games…and maybe even be on TV."_ She beamed up at her father, thrusting her very small, eager fists beneath her chin. _"Do you think I could, Daddy? Do you think I could be on TV someday? Do you think I could be like Riley?"_

Riley and the Emotions fired their attention up to Dad, leaning breathlessly on angles of mass anticipation. No one could speak. Few dared to take a breath. Fear struggled in vain to stifle an endless, high-pitched whimper by fixing his lower lip tightly between his teeth.

Riley closed her eyes as the silence persisted. Every heartbeat that passed was painful.

 _Come on Dad._

 _Look hard._

 _Look deep._

 _I never left you._

 _I'm right here._

 _"…Now…Riley wasn't ever on TV…"_ Her father's grin brought Taylor's dwindling smile back to life. _"…But we're not going to find out how good you are until we get you into a pair of your own skates, are we, kiddo? ...Would you like that?"_

 _"YES!"_

Headquarters' subsequent cheers overcame those coming from the television, and nearly those which came from Taylor herself. Anger jostled Riley by the wrists and Joy hauled her into a painfully tight hug, and Disgust squealed with her, jumping up and down on her toes. Bing Bong could practically hear the cacophony – when Taylor glimpsed in his direction, he flashed her two silent but feverishly excited thumbs of approval before disappearing from the room.

Riley's heart was pounding by the end of their cheers and applause; she stumbled far away from the console, a breathless grin reaching across her face as she watched Joy continue to drive without her.

"Wow...I can't believe it. I can't believe this is _actually_ working so far. You were right, Riley."

Riley turned to her immediate left, faced, now, with the profile of a terribly winded Fear who had narrowly kept himself from fainting moments ago. "…Maybe there IS a chance…Maybe we really _can_ make a Core Memory with Dad." And then, just as Riley was about to congratulate him for thinking so positively for once, he gulped, and his airborne brow sunk with the onset of anxiety. "…P-provided we don't screw it up, that is."

"You're going to do just fine," Riley assured him. "Taylor's an Andersen. She's got my blood." She placed a kind-hearted a hand on his back, being careful to avoid his Overflow. "And, I'll be with you guys every step of the way. Promise."

This, at least, seemed to raise his spirits a little. Fear turned at the waist, admiring Taylor's hovering Islands of Personality, and at first, Riley assumed he was about to envision where Hockey Island would surely be floating soon. But upon following his gaze, she found that he was instead looking out to Family Island, his eyes aglow with all of the hope an Emotion called Fear could ever muster.


	9. A Fair Share of Bruises

_I'm back everyone, and I'm so very sorry for the long wait between updates yet again. This pause was entirely my fault. I expected I could update during my honeymoon but naturally, never found the time. The longer I spent away from my creative outlets, the more I realized that I needed a mental break. :c I realize now that I should have just announced that I was going on hiatus before leaving home but I screwed up and failed to do so. Again, I'm super sorry._

 _I understand that Inside Out is old news for some people, but regardless I still plan to flood the inboxes of those following me with a few IO fic updates later in the week, just a heads up, as I'm still hopelessly in love with it and I'm loaded with ideas / plans c:_

 _Thanks again to those who have been patient enough to stick around and continue to read, and thanks to those who recently started following. Your encouragement is a tremendous help and means a lot to me!  
_  
 _~KQSimply_

* * *

The ridges of Riley's dreams drifted apart, returning her to the plains of reality, and at first was difficult to determine whether or not she'd actually returned to such a plain at all. Surrounded by a dazzling rainbow of her memories, it simply felt as though she'd crossed from one dream to another. A dreamworld in which her old bedroom had been divided into orb-shaped fragments all around her, allowing her to experience slivers of her former life before it faded away so many mornings ago.

There was no resisting the smile had waited all night to show itself. Her focus frolicked high above her, where memories of her ceiling stars had been hung, and then it came sliding down the colour-washed walls and found an orb containing a memory of her old hockey lamp seated on the night-side table. Riley placed her fingers on this memory's surface and glided them along its circumference, which moved its footage along to a point where she could see her own hand switching the lamp on. Light exuded from the memory, spilling into the room, and with that, Riley sat up and stretched.

Her room had everything she could have asked for and more in terms of comfort. The only thing it seemed to be missing was a clock ("But Taylor can't tell time yet anyway," Joy had informed her once, with a shrug, "so what would be the point of a clock?" which didn't make a lick of sense, but such was the flow of Emotion-logic). Still, Riley certainly wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to repay the Emotions for their kindness and their efforts to repaint her room with a surplus of fond, familiar memories. It was at once charming and heart-wrenching to think that they likely had no idea just how magical their gifts truly were to her, that she saw their contributions to her private quarters as brilliant, gleaming flecks of vigor, putting 'Life' to the term 'Afterlife'. She hoped that a new Core Memory for Taylor would come as a decent thank-you to them.

Today, after all, was going to be the day.

Riley pressed the sole of her bare foot to the floor, closing her eyes with the way Taylor's mind whispered back to her senses, transformed as they had become since she woke up inside of it. Every day, she could gather more information through simply feeling for Taylor's state of being than ever before. Today, it was just before she pulled her striped toe-socks onto her feet that she could tell Taylor was still sleeping. How alarming and entirely _too cool_ it was to sense Taylor's status without needing to see for herself. She felt like a magician. A soothsayer. No, better…she practically felt as talented as any of the other Emotions residing here in Headquarters. Now, that _was_ something.

She ventured out to the control area, being very cautious as she crept past the Emotions' rooms – it wasn't wise to disturb Anger too early in the morning, though to be perfectly frank, she was perhaps even more uneasy as she crossed Disgust's door. No one recommended interrupting her precious time of rest. Thankfully, she exited the hallway without incident, but in the end it was the silhouette standing before the wide window of early morning dreams that prompted Riley to remain extra quiet as she guided the door to a close behind her.

Fear was down there. Riley supposed he must have been wrapping up his Dream Duty shift, though if this was the case, she found it rather unsettling to discover him standing straight and tall and apparently on high-alert – normally, the Emotions were weary and lethargic at the end of a shift until Joy's arrival at the console. Not wanting to cause him any discomfort, given the pitiable fact that Fear startled as terribly as Anger snapped, Riley tip-toed to his position, tucking her hands behind her black. As she approached, hidden somehow from his sensitive peripheral vision, her ears picked up the distinctive sound of ceramic knocking against teeth, and she saw that there were three teabag strings hanging from the edge of the mug he held between his hands, and he was shaking so badly that he'd managed to spill more tea than he could sip.

Right away, Riley knew what had his nerves in a jumble, and she knew she had to correct this sooner, rather than later.

"'Morning,", she carefully whispered, immediately recoiling when Fear yelped and fumbled his cup in the most disastrous of ways. Tea went everywhere.

Naturally, Riley felt at fault, but Fear overrode her apologies with his own as he untucked a handkerchief from his sleeve and knelt to clean up his mess. He kept admonishing himself for unintelligible reasons until Riley finally put a stop to it by placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Hey, hey, take it easy."

"Sorry, Riley."

"And c'mon, stop apologizing. It's just me."

"Sorry. I'll stop." He blinked. "Er, starting now. _Sorry_."

Riley fixed him with a withering grin as she helped him to his feet again. "You're still pretty worried about the trip to the rink today, huh?" Fear nodded, and Riley felt her features collapse into a frown. "...Did you let Taylor get _any_ sleep at all?"

Fear winced, which wasn't at all reassuring. "Well…I-I tried my best. I did! I was going for a 'We're Way Too Excited to Fall Asleep' approach, but all I did was make a mess of things. I don't deal with excitement the same way Joy does – it always winds up upsetting me." He began to wring his hands, and as he continued to speak, his tone of voice began to rise. "I-it's just that there's so much riding on this outing: a new Core Memory, Taylor's safety, Dad's approval – I couldn't stop thinking about everything and what might go wrong – and it'll all be so – so _new_ , a-and—"

" _Relax_." It was clear that if Riley hadn't interrupted him, he might've kept going forever. With effort he forced himself to pause and look up at her. "There's really nothing to worry about. This'll be a cinch. First of all, Taylor's going to do just fine out there; she's an Andersen, she's got my blood. Remember?"

"Uh huh. A-and she's only got so much to spare. _I'm_ the one that has to keep that in mind, you know."

"And you will. I'm sure of it." She smirked pointedly before going on. "Second, it's not really all that new. It just seems that way since it'll be in a different body, but I'm sure some it will all come rushing back to you as soon as you hit the ice."

"We have to _hit it?_ How hard?"

"Never mind." Her eyes softened as she approached her third point, and she took a single step closer to him. "And last…don't worry about Dad. Okay? When he sees you guys out there in my old skates, giving it all you've got…he'll approve. I just know he will." She couldn't resist taking his hand…but as whispers sprang into the air around her head, surrounding her with doubt, uncertainty, and a dark, looming sense that something wasn't quite right, she found she couldn't hold it for long, even if it had brought Fear a little relief to be held by her. She simply couldn't stomach his Overflow.

Fear snatched his hand from hers the minute he realized he was making her uncomfortable. "Sorry, Riley. I'm sure you're right and all—you always are...I'm just afraid that maybe, this one time, you won't be. What if this doesn't work? What if something _does_ go wrong?"

"Just tell yourself that it won't." Fear cocked a brow at her as though she'd told him to solve some outrageous mathematical problem. So, she chose to end things on a different angle. "And, remember that I'll be with you every step of the way. Nothing'll go wrong if your big sister can help it. Okay?"

Fear dared himself to smile. His rigid posture finally eased. "...Yeah. Okay."

Riley smiled back at him. Perhaps from having settled Fear down by a few degrees, Headquarters felt warm and at peace for all of eight or nine seconds before various machinery and devices whirred to life around them. The lights in the control area came on in sections, and an invisible sun illuminated the outdoors.

Taylor's hand appeared in the window behind them, groping the edges of her bedside table for her glasses, and as this happened, the other Emotions were lead out from their rooms by an over-eager Joy, who executed her first steps of the day on tip-toe, light, delicate and full of life, like a ballerina at the peak of her performance. Already she was trying to talk Anger and Sadness into showing a little extra enthusiasm, but Anger wasn't having it just yet ("Knock it off, Joy. It's still only stupid o'clock," he was grumbling), and Sadness, as Riley knew, didn't handle mornings well enough to comprehend Joy's suggestion. Disgust, meanwhile, hovered on the landing, still powdering her nose, humming to herself before she dared to join the remainder of the crew.

Riley set her hands on her hips and grinned at the lot. "Good morning, Team."

A chorus of 'Good Mornings' followed, but it was Anger's deep voice which said "'Morning, Coach'" that caught Riley's attention, and she pointed at him. "There. Now _that's_ the attitude I'm looking for today!" Anger blinked at her, stunned and silent before he broke into an edgy sort of smile. It was really quite entertaining to find ways to flatter or compliment Anger….even if it did make Joy a little jealous on occasion. This morning was no exception, but as she favoured Joy with a wink, Joy smiled and did the same.

Taylor donned her glasses, blinking as her vision cleared. As she struggled to sit up, her bedroom door creaked open, and everyone's attention snapped on to the appearance of Dad as he poked his face in.

Riley found his eyes and dove into them. What she found was a look she was _wonderfully_ familiar with. It was a look he shared with her on once-lazy Sunday mornings before suggesting they do something together, just the two of them. A free-skate at the rink, a stroll downtown to see what was what, a car ride to nowhere and back. For a moment, Riley forgot her circumstances and felt thoroughly _alive_ as she looked at her father through Taylor's bright eyes.

 _"Hey, Taylor. You awake?"_

Taylor sat up and nodded. _"Uh huh."_  
 _  
"Excited for your first skating lesson?"_

From the corner of her view, Riley spotted and practically _felt_ as Fear shivered. He desperately cast his gaze all the way over to Joy, who was still a considerable distance from the console, hopelessly distracted as she watched the Train of Thought roll by the oval windows at the back of Headquarters. Disgust, here, deliberately coughed, which snatched Joy's attention at once; she pointed a stern finger over to the display. "Uh, Headquarters to Joy? I think that's your cue."

Joy spun and her blue eyes bounced from Dad's to the control panel, and she gave a sudden start, realizing what Disgust had implied. She rushed to her position, nearly bowling Riley over. "Whoops, it sure is."

The result of this tiny delay caused Taylor's answer to feel rushed...almost forced. _"Um…Yeah. Yeah! I'm excited._ _I'm ready for skating. I'm gonna beat up all the hockeymen and get lots of points and win and everything."_

A chuckle resonated from Dad's chest. _"Sure thing, kiddo. Find something warm to put on and I'll meet you downstairs. We'll head out right after breakfast."_

He closed the door behind him. Taylor bolted out of bed at Disgust's command and began a search for a suitable outfit to flaunt at a public skating rink. "I'm not going to let something like sports interfere with Taylor's budding sense of fashion. We're going to play some hockey and look cute while we're doing it." She shuddered for some reason and looked over at Riley with large, imploring eyes. "...Th-that's okay, right Riley?"

Disgust still had a terrible habit of checking with Riley before she let Taylor make any decisions. It felt odd to let her do so, but time and time again, she did. "Er...of course it is."

"Oh, thank _God_. Okay, where was I? Ah yes, something cute, something warm, something _not-orange…"_

Riley began to turn, thinking it best to let her sister continue to dress without her, when she felt a placid tugging at the base of her shirt, beckoning her attention. Riley looked down and found Sadness standing behind her, tucking a lock of her hair behind one ear with a shy swish of her hand. Her large, deep eyes were twinkling and absorbent; staring into them had the profound effect of drowning out the subtle noise in the background.

"…Riley?" she muttered, her voice small and meek. Riley had to lean in closer to hear her better. "…You _are_ going to help us get through this, right? You'll be there for us?"

Riley's heart swelled to twice its size. How could she have refused, even if she'd wanted? "Oh, Sadness…of course I will." She lay a hand on Sadness's shoulder. When this didn't seem to lift Sadness's spirits by even a fraction of an inch, Riley drew a breath and next lay her palm on Sadness's cheek, which was soft and very faintly moist. Compelled by Sadness's Overflow (or perhaps she would have felt compelled anyway), the girl frowned and lowered to one knee. The Overflow cast a shadow over Riley's once-positive outlook, quietly telling her that something was, in fact, off. _Wrong_. She leaned her head to one side, curious and a little more than uncomfortable. "…Where else would I be, other than with you?"

Sadness ducked her head, wringing her hands. There was a distinct answer to Riley's question languishing on the tip of Sadness's tongue, and Riley felt desperate to hear it. Here, a small intake of breath, and there, a to-and-fro movement of the eye, as Sadness prepared to utter what was on her mind.

The disquieting and thoroughly unfitting squeal of a kazoo overrode her. Riley tossed her head over her shoulder, gawking up to the display that Bing Bong had finally made his translucent appearance on.

 _"Can you believe it Taylor? Today's the day! It's finally here! You're going to learn to play hockey just like Riley!"_ he cried.

Bing Bong's obtrusive self attempted to cartwheel, though his form could've used a lot of work. When he was upright again, his fists were full of cheer flags marked with the letter 'T'. _"_ _ _Gimmie a 'T'! Gimmie an 'Aylor'! Gooooo Taylor!_ You ready to make some hockey players cry or what? They won't know what hit 'em! It's gonna be great! I can't WAIT til we get out there!"  
_

Riley stood up again, shoving all of her former apprehensions to the back of her head. "'We'? Hold up, _'We'?"_

The Emotions turned in unison to face her. She glared back at them, expecting to find disbelief equal to her own on their faces…and of course, she found nothing of the sort. They were wide-eyed, eager, and curious as to why she'd ever question Bing Bong's companionship. Riley opened up at once to explain herself. "Come on, you guys…Bing Bong can't come with us. He'll distract Taylor. To do this right, she's going to need to focus."

She scanned the Emotions in front of her with stern eyes at first, but once they happened upon Joy, she flinched, and her strict demeanor seemed to stagger. Joy was staring back at her with eyes which were confused and conflicted, and they blinked once or twice with disbelief at Riley's suggestion.

Joy panned her attention back to Bing Bong, who had started a jig in Taylor's honour. "...Wait. You mean...w-we have to leave Bing Bong behind? Here? All by himself?"

Already, Riley was beginning to regret what she'd suggested, even if she still believed it to be true. Her shoulders stooped as she tried to explain herself in a more delicate, heartfelt manner. "Well...yeah."

Everyone fell still. Even Anger seemed dumbfounded. And this, surprisingly enough, stung even more than Joy's stunned silence did. Finally, Riley expelled a great sigh and thrust her hands forward for understanding. "Look, I know you all want to take him along, but if we're going to make a new Core Memory for Taylor, we can't afford any distractions. It's not like we'll be leaving him behind forever. It's just for a little bit. Taylor has to just pretend to be me for, like, an hour or two, and then as soon as Dad sees that, she can go back to being four years old again and spend all the time she needs with Bing Bong. Okay?" She winced. "…You all understand…don't you?"

After a considerable pause, there were shuffling, scattered nods all around.

Riley forced herself to feel relieved.

"...Sadness?" she said, after a brief hesitation. "Think you can help Taylor explain it to him?"

Sadness shuddered as she regarded the console with a weak, reluctant gaze.

Taylor, therefore, shuddered too, arching her shoulders as she waited for him to finish his little dance that showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. _"Ummm…Bing Bong? Hold on a second."_ Bing Bong froze in mid-dance; his cosmic smile twitched, threatening to recoil. He was clearly apprehensive of the dark tone of Taylor's current voice _"…L-listen buddy, um…when you say 'we'..."_

 _"Er…Well…of course I say 'we'. We're gonna go to this thing together, aren't we? I'll get up in the stands and do the cheering while you do all the…hockey-ing. It'll be great, just like old times. You know, we haven't really played with each other since – since –"  
_  
Taylor put her hands up defensively, locking eyes with him as she made her cautious approach. _"I know, I know. It's been forever. I know you really wanna come, but…I think you should just stay home today."  
_  
The whole of Bing Bong's glowing nature turned over to something very unpleasant. His hands fell from the air, his flags tumbled to the floor, his trunk hung limp before his belly…his smile faded. _"…Huh? You…you want me to stay home?"_

Taylor tried to rescue the situation with a forced, short-lived smile of her own. _"Y-yeah. Just this once. I won't be gone for long. It won't be so bad, you'll see."_

Bing Bong collapsed to his bottom on the floor, his eyes wide and lost and beginning to water. His voice was very faint as he spoke. _"…Stay home…uh…okay…y-yeah!…I'll just…stay home..."_

The air began to feel strange and miserably heavy, like bad San Francisco fog. Taylor _truly_ didn't want to leave Bing Bong by himself…but this whole hockey ordeal wasn't a game to her. It certainly wasn't playtime. She wasn't even sure if it was _meant_ to be fun. She was doing it because a tiny little part of her was insisting that if she did everything correctly, if she could just be as Riley-like as possible, something magical would happen – something so magical that surely, her father, stony and cold as he seemed, would feel it too, and perhaps after that, things would change. Things would feel better.

Somehow, as though someone else had made her mind up for her, it only made sense.

Taylor lay a hand on the bridge of Bing Bong's trunk and pet him. Bing Bong purred for her in spite of his wandering eyes and the odd sugar cube that fell from them as he blinked at her. _"Shhh...Don't cry, Bing Bong,"_ Taylor said soothingly. " _I'm really sorry about this...It's just that…well, to be honest, I'm kind of nervous about this whole hockey thing. It's really serious business, and I'm just worried that I'll, you know…mess it all up somehow."_

Bing Bong sniffled. _"Really? I wouldn't've known, looking at you. You seem so brave."  
_  
 _"That's nice of you to say, B.B., but…deep down…I'm actually really scared."_ She shook herself and frowned, full of determination and vigor. _"But I'm not gonna let that stop me. I'm ready to do my best and make Daddy proud. Riley too. Still, if I'm gonna make a mistake or two out there…I'd rather not do it in front of Dad AND in front of you. Know what I mean?"_

Bing Bong sighed, running his sleeve beneath the end of his trunk. _"I…I guess so."_ He attempted a brave smile…but he couldn't manage it. It slid from his face in the same fashion his curious tears did. _"...I-I'll wait here for you until you get back. 'Kay?"_

Taylor flashed him a warm, loving smile. _"Thanks, Bing Bong. I'll be home before you know it, a_ _nd I'll be a better Taylor than ever before. I'm gonna make Riley SUPER proud to be my sister, and Dad's gonna...well..."_ She gulped as her eyes flickered to the doorway and back. _"...You'll see._ _Be good, Bing Bong."_

 _"Oh…I will,"_ he muttered, fanning his fingers in and out at her. _"…Bye-bye, Taylor."_

His faint image became fainter still as Taylor brought her bedroom door to a close.

* * *

"Alright, Team, let's look alive and recap."

Riley had assembled the Emotions in a neat row in front of the console. Their postures were immaculate and their attention to her was stringently precise and undivided. She paced up the line in one direction, then swiveled on her heel, passing them once more, pausing to address each individual in the order that she arrived to their position. She was posed as a coach, but felt more like a drill sergeant.

"Joy."

"Yes, Coach!"

Riley smirked. "Your assignment is clear?"

"Clear as crystal, Riley. We're gonna have fun; lots and _lots_ of it. We're going to love hockey as much as we love cake."

Riley gave a firm nod of her head. "I want you front and center and doing the majority of the driving. Can you do that?"

"Do birds fly? Are clouds fluffy? Is my name Joy?" She raised her hands, systematically cracking all of their knuckles and joints before giving in to excitement, dancing on her toes. "Ooh, I am feeling it, feeling it, _feeling it_. I'm totally ready. This'll be fun. This'll be easy! Step on it, Daddy, let's get to that rink!"

"Er, try to bottle it up until we get there, Joy."

"Ooh, yep, right. Sorry. Little Miss Excited over here." She chuckled, and then straightened. "I'll try to resist."

Riley winked at her before moving on to the next in line.

"Disgust?"

Disgust's body leaned into an elegant slant. "Mm-hmm?"

"Your goals are to keep Taylor's fun-to-seriousness ratios in check. She's gotta have fun – but not _too_ much fun."

"Er – right." Disgust went cross-eyed for a moment as she tried once more to wrap her head around this concept. "She – she's got to take it seriously enough that it makes a Core Memory, but have enough fun that the Core Memory stays happy." She frowned, batting her lashes. "Y'know Riley, in hindsight, that doesn't make a whole lot of –"

"It's a delicate balance, I know. But if anybody out there can manage it, it's you."

Disgust rolled her eyes, though her sarcastic sneer melted into a gutsy smirk. "Of course. Yes. I can manage pretty much anything. Where would you guys be without me?"

"That's my girl."

Disgust blushed as Riley moved on.

"Anger!"

"Riley!" Anger appeared to be the most attentive out of all of them. His gaze was fixed dead-ahead, burning straight through Riley's stomach. She appreciated that. It was no surprise that _this_ was where her determination came from back when he served in her Headquarters. He even saluted her as she stopped in front of him.

"It'll probably take Taylor two, maybe three tries to get the hang of things – "

"—Which is why I'm going to keep Stubborn Island running strong as ever." He balled his hands into eager fists. "'Quit?' Taylor never quits! The word alone makes me sick. As of today, I'm taking it out of our vocabulary."

"You'll give it all you've got?"

"And more!"

"And when the going gets tough?"

"I'll be even _tougher!"_

They high-fived.

"Sadness..." It was difficult for Riley to maintain her stern disposition whenever she addressed Sadness. Therefore, for this rainy-blue Emotion, her voice was soft and subtle.

Sadness shuffled forward, and….really….she did _try_ to appear as hardy and prepared as the others did, but she kept looking over her shoulder and out the car window, no doubt wondering how Bing Bong was faring without them.

"Oh – uh – present. I mean – hi. I mean–"

"Your job is to be as not-Sadness as you possibly can be, just this once. Think _encouraging_ thoughts. Okay? If you get the urge to be sad today, feel free to suppress it." Riley pointed to the farthest sofa. "I want you to have a seat over there and cheer Taylor on."

Sadness hesitantly obliged, folding her hands in her lap once she was seated. "…Uh…Cheering. Right. _Cheering_. Umm… _hooray_."

"With _feeling_."

"Um: Hooray – and… _stuff_."

"…You're, uh, you're getting warmer...? Keep working on it."

"Okay. Hooray…hoo- _ray_. _Hoo_ ….ray?..."

And, while Sadness practiced her rather dismal cheerleading, finally Riley came upon the last in line. Fear, who had been trying not to look at Dad through the rearview mirror, scrambled to straighten up his posture once Riley arrived to his position.

"…Fear."

He gulped.

Riley stood toe-to-toe with him, speaking in a low, intimidating voice, wearing a smirk that simply _dared_ him to break eye-contact with her. "…Your goal is the single-most important one of all. Remind me what it is, again?"

"Well... _I'm_ not to drive," he peeped.

"Beg pardon?"

"N-no driving."

Riley cupped her ear. "Sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

Fear rose his voice a little. "No driving, _ma'am."_

"That's Coach to you."

"Y-yes, Coach!"

"Look me in the eye and say it. No blinking. _Say it._ "

"N-n-no driving! I won't drive! I promise, I promise, no driving, I won't drive."

Riley nodded firmly. The smile she fixed him with felt as binding as a contract. She folded her arms behind her and continued along her militant stroll...

…only to flinch when Fear added under a single breath: _"Except-in-cases-of- **absolute** -necessity."_

Before Riley could strike up another banter with him, Joy squealed and rounded upon the console. "We're here, we're finally here, this is it!" She mashed keys and twisted knobs beneath her hand and Taylor skipped past her father, her eyes searching wildly for the hoards of hockeymen she was determined to beat up, one by one.

Riley grinned. The whole of her stippled being began to tingle.

Though Dad was holding her hand, Taylor was leading him onward like an eager puppy on a leash; her voice and giggles echoed through the facility. At one point she looked over her shoulder, and there it was…there was that familiar, undaunted smile Riley had seen her father sporting so many times, right before big events that featured his happy girl. To her shock, Family Island rumbled to life behind them. The Emotions were so focused on their various goals that Riley seemed to be the only one to notice it. The longer she watched as its figurines and animatronics creaked and danced, the more she could see that the Island was trying to rotate one of the statues to the front…the one hidden from view, stashed behind the shadows…the male one which represented their father.

 _"Alrighty,"_ Dad was saying, _"have a seat on the bench over there and we'll get you all fixed up."_ He laughed and set both of his hands on Taylor's ankles. _"Hold still, will you? No kicking. You'll shave more than just my beard off with these things if you aren't careful."_

As he laced up her skates, Riley glanced down and wriggled her toes. Closing her eyes brought on physical waves of awareness across her senses. She felt the cool air of the rink, the snugness of the skates on either of her feet…a breath of euphoria escaped her lips. It was as though Taylor's experience was bringing her back to life.

There was a sudden pause as Dad reached into his personal gym bag and withdrew a light-blue hockey helmet. It was so tiny, cradled within his large hands. He stared at it in silence for quite some time while Taylor watched, smoothing the backs of his knuckles along its scuffed, faded surface. The features of his face weakened, and his eyes clouded over, illegible as he lost himself in thought.

Taylor hiccuped (and here, Joy realized, with Disgust's help, that she had to ease up a little), encouraging Dad to take notice of her again. He carefully settled the helmet on Taylor's head, buckling the strap beneath her chin, and he smiled…though it was a strange smile. Eerily hollow, and somewhat dark, and a little unsettling at first…but it was new, too, and warmth seeped from it. Taylor and the Emotions seemed to be terribly fond of it, even if it made Riley feel a bizarre sort of weight roost on her shoulder.

She also happened to notice that Fear took this particular opportunity to back away from the console.

 _"…This helmet was your sister's once, when she was your age,"_ Dad finally explained in a low, distant voice. Now, Riley understood. _"...It's all yours, now. Looks like it's a perfect fit."_ He sighed through his nose, and a new warmth began to creep into this curious smile of his. _"…Wow."_

Taylor leaned forward as Dad carefully pulled her glasses off of her face. _"What?"_

He laughed again, in disbelief. _"…You really do look just like her."_

 _"...Just like Riley?"_

 _"…Yeah. You sure do. I never really noticed before."_

The Emotions turned in unison to face Riley, who could tell from the heat of her face she was blushing as pleasantly warm tears began to pool in her eyes.

Taylor beamed at him as Joy assumed control of the console. With her skates securely fastened, she was finally ready to face the rink. Unexpectedly, she found her hand tucked safe and sound in her father's hand, and Joy's jaw dropped. "Wow. Oh, wow. He's holding our hand! Look! We're not even at a crosswalk! This is _amazing!_ " Happy memories rolled down the railings, lining up for the eventual descent to Long-Term Memory. Riley and the others, even Sadness, cheered to see them.

 _"Let's head on out there, kiddo."_

Taylor grinned and stood up. Or, at least, she tried. A half-second later she was plunging toward the ground, having been caught off-guard by the seemingly impossible task of balancing on the two narrow blades attached to her feet. Dad caught her in the nick of time, not only preventing her from striking the floor, but unknowingly freezing Fear in his tracks before he could reach the console.

Riley was too stunned to snap at him for trying to drive. She couldn't recall a time where she, in her youth, had struggled to walk in her skates – from what she could recall of her own experience, it had all come to her so naturally. Her skates were like an alternate pair of feet she could borrow when her natural feet were bored of the earth and the soil and its monotonous traction. Skates were her wings. Her _destiny_. But then, perhaps she'd simply been too young to remember her VERY first experience. Perhaps it'd been harder than it seemed before becoming engraved on her brain, like riding a bike.

Yes. Surely, that was it.

She turned and snapped her fingers in Anger's direction. "Alright – let's keep Stubborn Island in check. We're just getting started. We're not going to give up already."

"Right." Anger slammed his palms against the keys of the console, and behind them, the steam-powered instruments of Stubborn Island squealed and thundered to life, fuelling the mechanical movements of a pig-tailed girl hauling relentlessly on the reigns of a seated mule.

 _"I can do it,"_ Taylor spouted as she struggled to keep her feet, blinking at the world that was so miserably fuzzy without her glasses.

 _"Alright. Just watch your step. Here we go, one foot in front of the other."_

 _"I know, Daddy."_ Taylor fought her hand from her father's grasp, attempting to walk a few pathetic steps ahead of him. _"I can do it!"_

 _"Fine, fine, if you insist…You sure are stubborn, aren't you?"_

Anger guffawed and straightened his tie. "Did you hear that, Riley? Well, did you? So far, so good!"

Riley focused again, finding Joy merrily steering the console, Sadness… _attempting_ , at least, to root Taylor on, Anger keeping a steady eye trained on Stubborn Island, and Fear chomping madly on his fingertips and frothing at the mouth, and Disgust monitoring Joy's erratic, at times unpredictable behaviour. Yes, things were going just –

She double-took in Fear's direction, noting the strange tick that was occurring under his left eyeball. He wasn't doing so well, she realized, and her stomach flip-flopped.

"Umm – _uhhhh_ – we're sort of _wobbly_ , aren't we, Riley?"

"She's fine," Riley said hastily. "Give her a few seconds to figure out her balance. It – it just takes a minute." She glanced up and changed the subject. "Keep it up, Joy, you're doing great."

"Thanks!"

The rink was completely empty – a true, energizing blessing in disguise. Riley passed her eyes over the ice, noting the faint grids former free-skaters had carved into it before them and a new, fresh smile attempted to creep out yet again as Dad stepped out onto the ice. He was a natural skater too. Riley had always been jealous of the way he could work himself across the ice without having to think about it. He could close his eyes and ride the rink in the same way a bird owned the sky. His footwork was immaculate. His starts and stops were clean and flawless. She'd always wanted to be as good as him some day. Riley closed her eyes for a moment, wondering how close she came before her illness forced her to resign from hockey.

When her eyes opened again, Taylor had eased herself onto the ice, focusing as best as she could on Dad's feet, watching as they curved and slid across the ice. Riley felt as Taylor's heart skipped a beat.

 _"Okay, Taylor. It's a little like walking, but you're going to use your toes a little more, you're gonna guide yourself along the ice just like I do. Come this way."_ He put his hands out to her. _"Easy does it. Come straight to me."_

Sadness squirmed in her seat, well aware that this was her cue. "Um – okay, straight. Yeah. We can go straight. Maybe? Maybe not. I, uh, I don't know. Probably not, that seems _hard_ …"

"Sadness," moaned Joy before Riley could speak. "Y'know, that's kind of the _opposite_ of cheerleading."

"Sorry."

Taylor rose and lowered her right foot, driving all of her concentration into 'walking with her toes', as Dad has suggested. But the ice was not what her body had come to expect at all. It caused her skates to behave in a manner she couldn't predict. Her foot wanted to keep going in directions her leg did not.

"What the – ? _Argh!_ It's like we have to learn to walk all over again. A-and it feels like we're constantly about to fall. This is Trouble, Trouble with two B's and a Q." Fear's voice was shaking. And it was as his own actions caused his voice to jerk that Riley turned...and discovered him _manning the console._

"Fear! You're doing the thing I specifically told you _not_ to do!"

Fear looked down to his hands and his eyebrows skyrocketed, as though he too was just learning that he'd shoved Joy out of his way to gain control of the device. He snatched his fingers away from the dials and crouched. "Sorry! Sorry. It just seemed like one of those times of necessity. Th-this stuff is _slick_."

"Yeah, Genius." Disgust was glaring at him, thoroughly unimpressed. "It's ice. It's like an ice-cube, only…bigger, I guess. And flatter. And we're, uh, on it for some reason." Disgust's tone kicked itself up a notch – there was a faint note of desperation in it, now. "Get up there, Joy, this is supposed to be your thing. Look, see, _Dad's_ doing it –"

"Yeah, yeah, I see it, I see it. Gosh, he makes it look so _easy_." Joy wet her lips and seized a wheel on the control panel, rotating it frantically. Taylor, in response, dared to push herself forward, while Fear spiraled into insanity in the background, clenching his sweater, tugging his collar, even the delicate nerve-like hair sprouting from his head to keep himself together.

"Come on, Joy, dig deep. Dig really deep." Riley's hands had become fists at some point in time. She couldn't determine when it happened. "Try to remember what it was like when you were with me. Whatever it was you did that made me feel like I could touch the stars…do it again."

Joy's eyes fluttered to an enchanted close. She lifted her chin as though seeking out the sun's warm, bolstering Summer rays, and her spirit seemed to curve inward, searching for skills deep within that she wanted to come bubbling to the surface. A light, feathery smile began to reveal itself and its pearly accessories as she did so. Joy's shoulders arched, her fingers quivering over the console.

"…I…I feel something," she whispered as Riley leaned toward her. "I feel it...I do!…I feel…music…music, I hear _music_ and _applause_ …"

Riley straightened, frowning. "…What? Music? _Applause?_ "

Disgust seemed to shudder. "Joy, not now. Snap out of it. We have to focus! This is no time to start daydreaming about –"

Fear finally exploded. "WATCH IT, JOY!"

There was a nasty thud as Taylor struck the ice with enough force to distort the display. Red footlights repainted the whole of the Headquarters control area, signaling that Taylor was in pain. Joy, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness, from her place on the couch, recoiled with a loud, grievous _"Ooooooh"_ in response, while Riley stammered incompetently from the side.

It was Taylor's first fall of what could wind up being many. It was only a _very_ _minor_ setback.

Why, then, did it feel so _wrong?_

"I – can't – _take it anymore!"_

Fear pounced on the console and drove in desperation around Joy's torso and much against Riley's continued attempts to fix things with words that weren't coming to her anymore. Taylor whimpered and shook herself in response to Fear's uncontrollable urge to drive, struggling to return to her knees in order to regard her palms, where she could pretend to see through her purple mittens and admire the developing bruises beneath.

 _"Still alive!"_ Fear cried as Taylor moved, blending relief into fresh waves of anxiety. A mad grin crossed his face as he attempted once more to regain total control. Whatever he was doing, it was causing Stubborn Island to malfunction. "Let's get the heck off the ice before something _else_ challenges that."

Riley rose her hands to protest. But when she opened her mouth, there were _still_ no words.

Something wasn't right.

"Hey! Who asked YOU to drive?! Move over; we're not quitting yet." Anger butted Fear out of his way and fought for a set of curvaceous levers on the control panel. He eased them forward by several calculated notches before turning at the waist to glare out the back window.

Riley, too, turned her attention out to Stubborn Island as Joy and Anger attempted to team up on the console. She could see as fine lines of steam began to issue from the joints of the mechanics out there. She could hear as the metal workings of the attraction began to grind in their attempts to work double-time to accommodate Anger's demands. And as she watched it struggle, Taylor fought her way back up to her feet and huffed through her nostrils, trying to be brave again.

 _"You okay, kiddo?"_

 _"Yeah."_

 _"Alright...up you get...let's try again."_

And she did. She stood up and made her best attempt to reach his outstretched hands, but found she was still unable to find her poorly developed sense of balance. Again, she slipped and fell. And again, she wrestled her way back to her feet, gritting her teeth against the new pains developing in her knees and elbows. She adjusted the position of her helmet and tried to advance once more. Only to fall again. And again. And again. And _again_. Until it became painfully apparent that she was spending more time collapsed on the ice than standing upright upon it. Dad insisted that Taylor slow down, that she rest a minute, but it only seemed to irk Anger all the more, prompting Stubborn Island to show off a display of pyrotechnics the Emotions didn't know it had. Before they knew it, Anger had assumed complete control; the air around him grew to be so hot and intense that it forced Riley and the other standing Emotions quite out of his way. Fueled by his fury, working her every ounce of concentration into her aching, uncoordinated muscles, clenching her fingers into her fists until they bit at her palms, Taylor couldn't feel the impact anymore as she collapsed over and over again.

At last, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Riley felt a violent urge to look away. When Taylor hit the ice once more with enough force to wake those blaring signals of pain again, she finally had to. It all felt so significantly hopeless that Taylor's falls were just painful to watch.

Something _was_ wrong.

That same something she'd felt the faint whispers of long before they'd arrived at the rink was coming back to haunt her. Rectifying the situation began to feel overwhelmingly impossible. The unfortunate thing was that aside from Fear, and perhaps Sadness, whose 'cheering' had long since ended, the other Emotions had become so determined to meet the respective agreements they'd made with Riley, they'd become painfully oblivious, even as Taylor's efforts went from bad to worse.

"We – w-we can keep trying," Joy insisted. Her voice shook at odd intervals as she spoke...her nigh-indestructible spirits were notably worn. "We have to get the hang of it sooner or later. We're working so _hard_."

"How much longer are we supposed to keep this up?" Disgust stammered as she attempted in vain to fan away Anger's flourishing flames. "Everything hurts, Taylor's exhausted, and this is just so... _so..._ so not what I was expecting..."

"You're giving up?!" Anger spat through his teeth. "Is that what it is? Just like that? Are you _giving up_ on Riley, after all we've been through today?"

Disgust was mortified. Her gaze shifted back and forth as she tried to dredge up words through the smoldering wreckage of her pride. Nothing came to her but the odd, devastated sputter. There were tears edging along Disgust's emerald eyes, which didn't dare to cross Riley's position.

Riley _couldn't_ let it end like this. This was wrong. All wrong. But it wasn't at all due to the quality of Taylor's performance.

It dawned on Riley all too suddenly, though she had not the words to explain it, that this budding disaster was _entirely_ her fault.

Before she could open her mouth to console any of the panic-stricken Emotions, to assure them that she wasn't upset, that she would never _ever_ think their struggles meant to insist anybody was giving up on her, a calm, emptily-level voice lifted into the air, and all heads turned toward the unexpected source that was Fear, who was inching toward the console, his large eyes locked on the display.

"...Dad? ...Wh-why are you looking at us like that?..."

Anger's early flames fizzled out in a single bewildered eyeblink. Joy faltered, a hand upon her chest as she turned to look out the window. Disgust blinked her tears away.

Riley felt as though all of the lights she'd ever known had just winked themselves out. It was dark, suddenly. Everything was dark.

Taylor was looking up and into the eyes of Dad who had come to hover over her. Ugly shadows had replaced those familiar shining lights that fueled his smile and the faint glimmers of life that had traced the features of his face. Neither Taylor, nor Riley, recognized him as the same man from less than an hour ago.

Sadness stirred on the couch, wringing her hands together as Fear stammered on, trying to sound braver than he was. "...We tried, we really tried, we did our very best...that was okay...right? It was at least a _little_ okay?"

Dad shook his head. He chuckled softly from his nose and helped Taylor back to her feet, keeping his hands on her shoulders.

 _"...Uh...listen Taylor...what do you say we pack it in for the day, huh?"_

Taylor rose her head, blinking her wide, blurry eyes.

 _"...Sorry, kiddo...I just don't think this is meant for you."_

 _"But, but..."_ Heat began to climb into Taylor's eyes, obscuring her vision even more. _"...you said...y-you said I looked like Riley..."_

This seemed like the most relevant thing to say. She didn't know how else to phrase it, being so little.

Dad released a long, hollow sigh. His gaze flitted from the space in front of his nose to the skates tied to Taylor's little feet, to the baby-blue helmet on her head. He couldn't look her in the eye anymore.

A retort was poised on his tongue. Riley could tell by the way it churned in his mouth, by the way his throat bobbed as he struggled to swallow, to prepare himself. For a moment there was a flicker of fear...and then a brief moment of deep, resonating sorrow...and then, for a terrifying flash of an instant, what might have been unkempt, bottled rage...

And then, a little too suddenly, he let it all go. His breath eased from his lips, his shoulders fell...he settled a hand on Taylor's shoulder, escorting her from the ice.

 _"Yeah, I know. And you know what? You really do."_ A pause. _"...Well...In the end, sweetie, when you get right down to it, even if you do_ look _like Riley...you're still Taylor. There's only so much you can do."_

Riley lowered herself to the edge of the sofa.

Gutted.

It was not the failure of the outing, nor was it even Dad's peculiarly devastating words.

But that even alive, even after all of the human errors she had made in her life while it lasted, Riley had never felt quite so guilty.

And Headquarters had never felt so empty, nor so deafeningly quiet. No one could speak as Taylor and her father returned to the car. No one moved, no one so much as dared to open their mouths until Taylor was inside and the scenery outside of the car window moved as they pulled away from the rink.

Anger spoke first. "...I...I can't believe it," he muttered, his eyes seeming to burn through the floor. "...I knew the stakes were high...I knew there was a chance that we'd struggle...but I thought we were at least playing our cards right...I thought we were on the right track...Who knew that _Dad_ would give up on us before _we_ did...?"

Disgust massaged her bare arms, cringing through her teeth. She, too, seemed to aim her discussion to the floor below her feet. "...what did Dad mean by all of that? By what he said? Of...of course she's _Taylor_...I thought that was supposed to be a good thing. Isn't...isn't that enough?..."

Riley began to feel dizzy with a very real, very livid sickness, a class of sickness she remembered experiencing long before she died. It was jarring to feel these sensations all over again. It was almost too much. Riley almost preferred the sensation of nothingness she sometimes experienced when she strayed too far from the window that taunted her with the sight of the Earth she left behind.

"...Oh, Sadness, _please_ , come on," Joy urged in an uncanny tone of voice, prompting Riley to lift her head. "This is bad enough. Do you _have_ to make it worse? Do you have to focus on every little thing that went wrong today?"

Riley sighed, steadily shaking her head. "It's alright, Joy," she said quietly. "...Just let her drive."

There was a soft moan from behind her, and Riley glanced up once more, this time coming to stand from the sofa. Her guilt mutated into something far more gruesome and overweight as it tugged and pulled at her heartstrings. "...Fear? Fear...where are you going?"

Fear looked over his shoulder from the top of the ramp and offered a paltry shrug of his shoulders. "Oh...Don't mind me. I'm just gonna go be anywhere else but out here."

He pulled the door to the hallway to a gentle close behind him.

"I _knew_ this wasn't going work," she heard him sigh. "...We're just Taylor...There's only so much we can do."


End file.
